What indeed after this? Except in despair we adopt the child's well-known definition--"First you think, and then you draw round the think." I have been more than once asked to deliver a lecture explaining the process. Of course such an idea is too absurd for serious consideration. The comic writer cannot give anyone a recipe for making jokes, nor can a comic actor show you how to grimace so as to make others laugh in this serious country. We are not taught to look at the comic side of things--any humorous element may grow, like Topsy, unaided--nor is the power given to many to explain to others their inventions. Bessemer, the inventor of the steel bearing his name, when he first made his discovery was asked to read a paper explaining his invention to a large meeting of experts. He had his carefully-prepared notes in front of him, but they only embarrassed him. He struggled to speak, but failed. Only the weight of the lumps of metal dangling in his coattail pocket kept him from collapsing. Suddenly he dived his hand into the pocket and produced a piece of steel, which he thumped on the table. "Bother the paper! Here is my steel, and I'll tell you how I made it!" So would it be with a caricaturist. After a struggle he would say, "Bother words, words, words! Here is a pencil, and here is some paper. I'll show you how I caricature." Personally, I have no objection to being caricatured--I frequently make caricatures of myself. Nor have I any objection to being interviewed--I interview myself. What else are these pages but interviews? I confess I fail to see any objection to a legitimate caricature or a legitimate interview. On the contrary, I look upon interviewing by an experienced and sympathetic writer as invaluable to a public man who is bringing out something novel and of interest to the public at large. It certainly seems to me judicious that he should give his preliminary ideas regarding it to the public firsthand, instead of allowing them to leak out in an unauthentic and disfigured form through the fervid imaginations of irresponsible scribes, leading to much misconception. [Illustration: CARICATURE OF ME BY MY DAUGHTER, AGE 15.] But I do object to the incapable, be he an interviewer wielding the pencil or the pen. To illustrate my meaning I shall take the latter first. The pen in this case did his work in true professional style. He came to interview me, and by doing so to "boom" me for a journal which was about to make a feature of my contributions to its pages. He brought with him a new note-book of remarkable size; an artist with a portfolio, pencils, and other artistic necessities; and a photographer! The interviewer shall describe the scene in his own words. [Illustration: A SERIOUS PORTRAIT--FROM LIFE.]