I remember another incident which will serve to illustrate the trials and misfortunes of the caricaturist when pursuing his vocation outside the walls of his studio. It was the opening day of the New Gallery, and as I draw my sketches of the pictures with an ordinary pen and liquid Indian ink direct, and have them afterwards, like all my drawings, photographed on wood and engraved--of late years they are reproduced by process engraving--I was holding my bottle of ink and my sketch-book in one hand, while my pen was busy with the other. Upon arriving very early in the morning I thought I must have made a mistake, and that I had entered a manufactory of hats, for the hall was almost entirely taken up with hat-boxes. Upon enquiry, however, I learned that these merely contained the new hats in which the directors would, later on, receive their visitors. When the hall began to fill, and the fashionable crowd was pouring in, I was standing in the central lobby, sketching away with a will, when my friend Sir William Agnew, always early to arrive on such occasions, happened to come up and soon interested me in conversation about the genius of Millais and the beauties of Burne-Jones. In my energetic manner I was debating a matter of some little interest when my eye caught that of Mr. Comyns-Carr, who, with his newly-selected hat on, was standing close by and regarding me with an expression of indescribable horror. "What is the matter with Carr?" I observed to Agnew; "surely Sargent should be here and hand down that expression to posterity." But when I followed his eyes as they passed sternly from mine to the floor, my hat nearly sprang off my head at the sight which I beheld! Forgetting that I held the bottle of ink in the hand with which I had been suiting the action to the word in my animated harangue to Sir William, I had splashed the virgin marble on which we were standing in all directions with hideous stains of the blackest of liquids. In my consternation I did not stay to see the incongruous figure of the charwoman and bucket who was immediately introduced amid the _elite_ of fashionable London, but fled incontinently from the gallery and, rushing in where angels fear to tread, sought sanctuary in my accustomed haunt, the Gallery of the House of Commons. There at least I thought I should be safe. Presently, when I had somewhat recovered from my agitation, I was making my way out of the House when I encountered a friend in the Central Lobby. I was explaining to him the unfortunate _contretemps_ which had occurred at the New Gallery, and utterly forgot that I still held the bottle of ink in my hand, and on the sacred floor we stood upon I had perpetrated the offence again!