In the newspaper shop windows--always an attraction to me--the coloured portrait of Garibaldi was fly-blown, the pictures of the great fight between Sayers and Heenan were illustrations of ancient history, and in the year I was born _Punch_ published his twenty-sixth volume. [Illustration: HARRY FURNISS, AGED 10.] Leaving Wexford before the railway there was opened, my parents removed to the metropolis of Ireland, and I went to school in Dublin at the age of twelve. It was at the Wesleyan Connexional School, now known as the Wesleyan College, St. Stephen's Green, that I struggled through my first pages of Caesar and stumbled over the "pons asinorum," and here I must mention that although the Wesleyan College bears the name of the great religious reformer, a considerable number of the boys who studied there--myself included--were in no way connected with the Wesleyan body. I merely say this because I have seen it stated more than once that I am a Wesleyan, and as this little sketch professes to be an authentic account of myself, I wish it to be correct, however trivial my remarks may seem to the general reader. It is in the same spirit that I have disclaimed the honour of being an Irishman. Once upon a time, when I was a very little boy, I remember being very much impressed by a heading in my copybook which ran: "He who can learn to write, can learn to draw." Now this was putting the cart before the horse, so far as my experience had gone, for I could most certainly draw before I could write, and had not only become an editor long before I was fit to be a contributor, but was also a publisher before I had even seen a printing press. In fact, I was but a little urchin in knickerbockers when I brought out a periodical--in MS. it is true--of which the ambitious title was "The Schoolboys' _Punch._" The ingenuous simplicity with which I am universally credited by all who know me now had not then, I fancy, obtained complete possession of me. I must have been artful, designing, diplomatic, almost Machiavellian; for anxious to curry favour with the head master of my school, I resolved to use the columns of "The Schoolboys' _Punch_" not so much in the interest of the schoolboy world as to attract the head master's favourable notice to the editor. Accordingly, the first cartoon I drew for the paper was specially designed with this purpose in view, and I need scarcely say it was highly complimentary to the head master. He was represented in a Poole-made suit of perfectly-fitting evening dress, and the trousers, I remember, were particularly free from the slightest wrinkle, and must have been extremely uncomfortable to the wearer. This tailorish impossibility was matched by the tiny patent boots which encased the great man's small and exquisitely moulded feet. I furnished him with a pair of dollish light eyes, with long eyelashes carefully drawn in, and as a masterstroke threw in the most taper-shaped waist.