with whom this volume is not concerned) produces, he must have
dull senses who deplores the present and must hark back to the
days, let us say, of Charles Keene to find satisfaction for his
artistic cravings.

[Illustration: GOING IT!
SHE: After this, what do you say to a jaunt on one of the new tubes?]

If it be a merit to add to the gaiety of nations, then Frank Reynolds,
on that count alone, deserves of his fellow men more than a passing
approbation. He is something more than a mere jester, however: his
humour but flavours, as it were, a serious study of human nature.
Ignoring, for a moment, the skill and charm of his technique, one
feels it to be an accident only that his vehicle of expression
is pictorial and not literary. He occupies amongst artists the
place which the novelist holds amongst men of letters. When to
the recognition of this distinction is added a consideration of
his artistic ability, _per se_, his title to the appreciation of
men of taste and sensibility must be conceded.

Frank Reynolds is fortunately a young man. Long may we continue
to suffer the good-natured pricks with which his gentle shafts of
satire, piercing the cracks in our self-complacent armour, stimulate
us; long may we continue, secure in our own self-esteem, rapturously
to gloat over the spectacle of our dear friends and neighbours
held up, by his whimsical humour, to keen but harmless ridicule.

[Illustration:]