“Cruikshank spoke most gravely on this ‘hideous, abominable, and most dangerous custom,’ an evil that he was determined to try to put down, and for this end he had prepared the designs that he showed to me, and which had been already engraved. These illustrations he wished me to work into letterpress, which should first appear in the projected magazine, and should then be reprinted in the form of a small pamphlet. He did not desire to make money by the publication of this pamphlet; on the contrary, he intended to have many thousand copies printed at his own expense, and to employ men to distribute them gratuitously to the public. There were to be men posted outside every railway station in London, and as each cab or carriage rolled from under the gateway, one of the pamphlets was to be tossed into the vehicle. The omnibus travellers were to be liberally dealt with in the same way, and by these means Cruikshank was quite sanguine that the reform which he so much desired would be effected in generation. “I could not see in this a very promising subject my pen; but, as the article was to make its first appearance in the new magazine, I agreed, to write something in furtherance of the object that he had in mind, and to incorporate the illustrations that he had prepared. After a while I took Mr. Cruikshank the article that I had written. He was more than disappointed with it--he was horrified. I had treated that grave and earnest question in a light and jocular spirit! It would only amuse instead of warn the reader! it would never do! and so on, with a great deal of action of hands and head. I argued that it was more likely to make the desired impression upon their minds, if they read what I had written, than if they were presented with a grave sermon-like treatise on the theme. But my arguments failed to move him, and he asked me to write another, and far more serious, paper on the subject. This I declined to do, and requested him to get some other author to carry out his ideas. “Whether he ever did so or not, I do not know. The collapse of the new magazine in its early infancy prevented the appearance in that quarter of George Cruikshank’s tilt against stick and parasol sucking, and I am not aware if the engraved blocks of which I have spoken were ever made public. If any one is sufficiently curious to know the nature of the manuscript that I submitted to Cruikshank, he may do so by referring to _Motley_, by Cuthbert Bede, published by James Blackwood in 1855. There he will find eight pages taken up by an article, illustrated by myself, called ‘Dental Dangers,’ which is, _verbatim_, printed from the manuscript that I had written for Mr. Cruikshank--which, however, I called ‘Take Care of your Teeth!’