platitudinous; 'bland, passionate, but deeply religious.'" Mark Twain, on his visit to London in 1907, was welcomed with pen and pencil--in the cartoon "To a Master of his Art," where _Punch_ salutes him over the punch-bowl and in some verses, _à propos_ of the dinner at the Pilgrims' Club:-- Pilot of many Pilgrims since the shout "Mark twain!"--that serves you for a deathless sign-- On Mississippi's waterway rang out Over the plummet's line-- Still where the countless ripples laugh above The blue of halcyon seas long may you keep Your course unbroken, buoyed upon a love Ten thousand fathoms deep! Some three years later came _Punch's_ "_Ave, atque Vale_," when Mark Twain died in April, 1910:-- Farewell the gentle spirit, strong to hold Two sister lands beneath its laughter's spell! Farewell the courage and the heart of gold! Hail and Farewell! To complete these American references I may add that _Punch_ in 1907 made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works. But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later, when the Phoenix Society revived _The Maid's Tragedy_, a similar offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher, Esq." and "--Beaumont, Esq." JOURNALISM Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and the journalist had leapt to the eyes of _Punch_, who himself was in a sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical disapproval of the _St. James's Gazette_ when that journal, in October, 1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action by the literary enterprise of our modern _enfants terribles_. The adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his freedom as a war correspondent. [Illustration: THE WISDOM OF THE EAST JAPANESE OFFICER (to Press Correspondent): "Abjectly we desire to distinguish honourable newspaper man by honourable badge."] [Sidenote: _The Daily Mail Arrives_]