One day he and I were "doing" the picture shows in the interests of Mr. Punch. At one o'clock, feeling jaded and tired, a retreat to the Garrick Club to lunch was suggested. "Happy thought!" said my editor. "Better still, here is an invitation for two to the Exhibition of French Cookery at Willis's Rooms. Capital lunch there, I should think." So off we went, anticipating a _recherche_ lunch. Fancy our chagrin on arrival to find cooks galore, discussing their art, but, alas! their art, like the high art of the Masters of the Brush in our National Gallery, was all under glass! Aggravatingly appetising, but absolutely uninteresting to the two hungry art critics. We soon were in a cab and at the Garrick. As we pulled up, the greatest _gourmet_ of the Club, that clever actor, Arthur Cecil, greeted us: "Hallo, Frank, where have you two come from?" "Oh, Arthur, _such_ luck! Furniss and I have just had the most _recherche_ lunch you could imagine." "H'm--hullo--h'm--where? The deuce you have! Lucky dogs! Eh, what was it like?" "Oh, you can see it for yourself; it's going on now at the French Cookery Exhibition in Willis's Rooms. Special invitation--ah, here's a ticket." "Thanks, old chap! what a treat! I'm off there! No, no; you fellows mustn't pay the cab--I'll do that. Here, driver--Willis's Rooms--look sharp!" Arthur Cecil undoubtedly was a quaint fellow and a clever actor, but he had an insatiable appetite. One would never have thought so, judging from appearance: his clever, clean-cut face, his small, thin figure, together with the little hand-bag he always carried, rather suggested a lawyer or a clergyman. His eccentricity was a combination of absent-mindedness and irritability. The latter failing, he told me, would at times take complete control of him: for instance, he had to leave a train before his journey was completed, as he felt it impossible to sit in the carriage and look at the alarm bell without pulling it. I have watched him seated in the smoking-room of the club we both attended, in which the star-light in the centre of the ceiling was shaded by a rather primitive screen of stretched tissue paper, gazing at it for half-an-hour at a time, and eventually taking all the coins out of his pocket to throw them one after another at the immediate object of his irritation. He frequently succeeded in penetrating the screen, the coins remaining on the top of it, to the delight of the astonished waiters.