“From off your forehead,” I replied. “From off my forehead!” he echoed, as he rubbed it fiercely. “Yes,” I said, “it has been there ever since you entered the room.” Cruikshank seized his hat, and looked into its crown, when it appeared that the ivory circlet had dropped from, the ventilating hole in the crown of the hat as Cruikshank had walked to my house, and that it had found its way down to his forehead, where, what with the heat of his head and the fragments of glue on the ivory, it had become firmly fixed, and would perhaps have remained there for some hours longer if he had not accompanied his conversation with so much action When he found out the truth, and fully realized the absurdity of the intense relief--for I was beginning to feel that I could not bear the mystery much longer--the ivory badge fell situation, he burst into such a hearty roar of laughter as I have not heard for many a day. This was my first personal introduction to George Cruikshank.’” Cuthbert Bede had also the advantage of seeing Cruikshank at work on that plate of his magazine which will make its two numbers live longer than many a serial which has lasted twenty years. “When I first went into his studio,’’ says Cuthbert Bede, “there were many specimens of his work around him, oil paintings, etchings, and wood-block drawings in various stages of execution. He seemed to take a particular pleasure in showing me these, and in explaining their designs. The chief work on which he was thus engaged was his wondrous etching of ‘The Comet of 1853,’ which was to form the frontispiece for the projected magazine. On account of its dimensions--the actual plate, without the title, ‘Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853,’ being 15 1/4 by 7 inches--it had to appear as a folding plate. It was crammed with hundreds of figures, giving, at one view, an epitome of the leading events of the year--the Peace Conference, the war between Russia and Turkey, the war in China, the Queen’s review of the troops at Chobham, the naval review at Portsmouth, Spirit Rapping, Table Turning, the Derby Day, Betting, the City Corporation Commission, John Gough and the Temperance Demonstration, the Nineveh Bulls, the Zulu Kaffirs and Earthmen, the Anteater, Albert Smith’s ‘Mont Blanc,’ Charles Kean’s ‘Sardanapalus,’ Bribery and Corruption, the Australian Gold Discovery, Mrs. Stowe and ‘Uncle Tom,’ the New York and Dublin Exhibitions, the Vivarium, Guy Fawkes, Lord Mayor’s Day, Wyld’s Great Globe, Captain McClure and the North-west Passage, Miss Cunningham’s Seizure by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Ceiling-walker, Smithfield Cattle Show, Chiswick Flower Show, Christmas Merry-making, and the Pantomimes--these are among the subjects that appear in the Comet’s Tail, and the gradual progress of which to its ultimate perfection I was so fortunate as to see....