Few imagine that a caricaturist requires models to draw from. Although I will not further digress at this point, I may perhaps be pardoned if I return later on in this book to the explanation of my _modus operandi_--a subject which, if I may judge from the number of letters I receive about it, is likely to prove of interest to a large number of my readers. It was when I was still quite a boy that my first great chance came. Being in Dublin, I was asked one day by my friend the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan to make some illustrations for a paper called _Zozimus_, of which he was the editor and founder. As a matter of fact, _Zozimus_ was the Irish _Punch_. Mr. Sullivan, who was a Nationalist, and a man of exceptional energy and ability, began life as an artist. He came to Dublin, I was told, as a very young man, and began to paint; but the sails of his ships were pronounced to be far too yellow, the seas on which the vessels floated were derided as being far too green, while the skies above them were scoffed at as being far too blue. In these adverse circumstances, then, the artist soon drifted into journalism, and, inducing his brothers to join him in his new venture, thenceforth took up the pen and abandoned the brush. Each member of the family became a well-known figure in Parliamentary life. Mr. T. D. Sullivan, the poet of the Irish Party, is still a well-known figure in the world of politics; but my friend Mr. A. M. Sullivan, who died some years ago, belonged rather to the more moderate _regime_ which prevailed in the Irish Party during the leadership of Mr. Butt. At the time when I first made his acquaintance he was the editor and moving spirit of the _Nation_. It was a curious office, and I can recall many whom I first met there who have since come more or less prominently to the front in public life. There was Mr. Sexton, whom my friend "Toby" has since christened "Windbag Sexton" in his Parliamentary reports. Mr. Sexton then presided over the scissors and paste department of the journals owned by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and, unlike the posing orator he afterwards became, was at that early stage of his career of a very modest and retiring disposition. Mr. Leamy also, I think, was connected with the staff, while Mr. Dennis Sullivan superintended the sale of the papers in the publishing department.