In the last number of the Omnibus, Cruikshank announced that, having “resumed” an arrangement entered into “a twelvemonth ago with Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,” he could not continue his _Fireside Miscellany_--monthly. He ended with a pictorial joke. “If he and his literary associates,” he added, “should meet the reader as agreeably in an annual as in a monthly form,” he trusted it would be as long as it was short. The remark was illustrated by the square figure of a man. The long and short of it, however, was, that the Omnibus never appeared again. The following note will give the reader an idea of the activity of Cruikshank’s faculty of suggestion, which led him so often to advance unwarrantable claims as an originator. It is addressed to Laman Blanchard:-- “My dear Blanchard,-- “Barker does not mean anything by ‘Unity.’ ‘Unity Peacham’ is a _real_ name somewhere in Westminster. “That do not-wish-to-be-known young gentleman has sent me a paper entitled ‘The Alamode Beef Shop.’ I have sent for him to suggest a series of papers upon ‘Eating Houses,’ or something of that sort, and will get him to make two or three alterations in this first paper, and will then send it to you. I think it would be desirable to have it in the neighbourhood; that is, if you think as favourably of it as does “Yours truly, “G. Cruikshank. “P.S.--Some one sent us a paper entitled ‘The Alamode Beef Shop.’ I think he ought to have a note stating that he has been anticipated, and that we do not allude to politics. I would keep that ‘Traveller’s Story’ * back. We can find some other trick to finish it with. You may use the ‘Hot Water’ in the ‘Chat’ if you like. I think also we had better omit those T-total cuts; they would come in well with the Confessions of a T-totaler?” * “Travellers’ Stories, or Travellers’ Tales, would make a good heading--a good _Peg_.” Where Cruikshank put up a peg he was inclined to claim any hat that was hung upon it. [Illustration: 330] END OF VOL. I. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life Of George Cruikshank, Vol. I. (of II), by Blanchard Jerrold