Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/574

The same model has stood for all his principal people for the last ten years, and he has a wardrobe of artistic "props" big enough to fit out every member of the House of Commons. He is a perfect business man. His ledger is a model book. Every one of his pictures is numbered. In this book spaces are ruled off for—Subject, Publisher, When delivered, Published, Price, When paid, When drawing returned, Price of original, and What came of it. Humour by no means knocks system out of a man. Look at the score of pigeonholes round the studio. As we are talking together now his secretary is "typing off" his illustrated weekly letter which finds a place in the St. James's Budget, New York World, Weekly Scotsman, Yorkshire Weekly Post, Liverpool Weekly Post, Nottinghamshire Guardian, South Wales Daily News, East Anglian Times, and in Australia, India, the Cape, etc. He writes children's books and illustrates them. His impressions of America are in course of preparation. There is his weekly Punch work; he is dodging about all over the country giving his unique "Humours of Parliament" entertainment, and he found time to make some special sketches for this little article.

From a Drawing by Mr. Furniss.

We sat down. Tea was brought in—he believes in two big breakfast cups every afternoon—and with "Bogie," the Irish deerhound—so called owing to his very solemn-looking countenance—close by, Mr. Furniss went back as far as he could possibly remember, to March 26th, 1854. That is the date of his birthday.

"I am always taken for an Irishman," said Mr. Furniss. "Nothing of the kind. My father was a Yorkshireman. He was in Ireland with my mother, and I believe I arrived at an unexpected moment. Possibly my artistic inclinations came through my mother. Her father was Æneas Mackenzie, a well-known literary man of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and proprietor of several newspapers. He founded the Newcastle School of Politics, and Mr. Joseph Cowen—as a boy—got his first tuition in politics from sitting at the knee of my grandfather. A bust of him is in the Mechanics' Institute—which he founded."

"At work."
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

Little Harry was brought up in Wexford. He remembers being held up in his nurse's arms to see the Great Eastern pass on its first voyage, whilst an incident associated with the marriage of the Prince of Wales is