If the reader will try this little joke on a score of people, by the time the twentieth is arrived at he will then discover why the happiest quartette of youngsters in the immediate vicinity of Primrose Hill laughed so gaily. Then we all went in to dinner. How well the shirt-cuff story went down with the soup. "Pellegrini," said the artist, "used to remark somewhat sarcastically to his brother artists: 'Ah, you fellows are always making sketches. I carry all mine here--here in my brain!' Pellegrini wore very big cuffs. He made his sketches on them. Until this came out we thought his linen always dirty!" [Illustration: BALLYHOOLY, M.P., GETS EXCITED.] Then Burnand came on with the beef. The two fellow-workers on _Punch_--Mr. Burnand and Mr. Furniss--run pretty level in their ideas. A happy thought is often suggested to both of them through reading the same paragraph in a newspaper, and they cross in the post. We spoke of _Punch's_ Grand Old Man--John Tenniel--of clever E. J. Milliken, whose really wonderful work is yet but little known. Mr. Milliken wrote "Childe Chappie"--and is "'Arry." Of Linley Sambourne, whom Mr. Furniss once saw walking down Bond Street, and had the strange intuition that he was the artist, connecting his work, and walk, and bearing together. He had never seen or spoken to him before. Charles Keene's name was mentioned. It was always the hardest matter to get Keene to make a speech. He far preferred the famous stump of a pipe to spouting. Mr. Furniss hurt Keene's feelings once with the happiest and kindest of compliments. It was at a little dinner party, and Mr. Furniss linked Keene's name with that of Robert Hunter--who did so much to provide open spaces for the people. He referred to Keene as "the greatest provider of open spaces!" Keene said he was never so grossly insulted--he never forgave Mr. Furniss. He failed to see the truly charming inference to be drawn from this remark. [Illustration: "THE ASSASSINATED SCARECROW, SOR!"] We went into the drawing-room, and together ran through the pages of a huge volume. It contained the facsimiles of the pictures which comprised one of Mr. Furniss's biggest hits--what was in reality an attack on the Royal Academy. His "Artistic Joke"--a sub-title given to this exhibition by the _Times_ in a long preliminary notice--created a sensation six years ago. He attacked the Royal Academy in a good-natured way, because he was not himself a member of that influential body. But there was a more solid and serious reason. "I saw how cruel they were to younger men," he said; "the long odds against a painter getting his work exhibited, the indiscriminate selection of canvases."