"My first work was on _London Society_, for Florence Marryat," he said; "then for the _Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News_. The _Illustrated London News_ employed me. I did such things as the Boat Race, Eton and Harrow cricket match, and similar subjects--all from a humorous point of view. I have had as many as three full pages in one number. Then came that terrible distress in the mining districts. I was married that year. I was sent away to "do" the Black Country, and well remember eating the first Christmas dinner of my married life alone in a Sheffield hotel. [Illustration: MR. FURNISS ON "RHODA." _From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._] "Those sketches were never published. They were too terribly real. The people dying in rooms with scarcely a stick of furniture, the children opening the cupboards and showing them bare, appealed to me, and my pencil refused to depict anything else. It was the same kind of thing that was afterwards made notorious by Sims and Barnard in "How the Poor Live." I came back and was selected to do some electioneering work for the same paper. This necessitated the putting off of a little dinner party to some friends, and I wired one of the invited to that effect. When I was starting, imagine my surprise to meet a _Graphic_ artist on the platform, and to hear that my friend had unwisely given away the contents of my telegram! However, we chummed up. He stayed with friends--I at an hotel. I sat up all that night working after attending the meetings. At four o'clock I heard a knock at the door. A journalist. I was just about to put into my picture the large figures. I made him very much at home, and told him I would give him any information I knew as to the previous night's proceedings if he would act as my model. He did. We worked on till breakfast time, and we sat down together. I sent off my page--it was in a week before the _Graphic_! It was a good return. I had started on the Tuesday, got home on the Thursday, and never had my boots off the whole time! I'd rather keep my boots on for a week than disappoint an editor." _Punch!_ I asked Mr. Furniss if Tom Taylor helped him to any considerable extent. Oh! dear, no. Tom Taylor wrote a terrible fist, spattered the page all over with ink, and invariably replied on the back of the letter sent him. At least, it was so in Mr. Furniss's case. He would send sketches to _Punch_; they were acknowledged as "unsuitable." They invariably turned up a week or so later--the idea re-drawn by a member of the staff! He began to despair. But that first cartoon in the schoolboy's periodical was always before him.