[Illustration: Telegraphic Address, Likajoko, London]
_Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives._
[Illustration: AGE 10.
_From a Photo. by W. Andrews, Dublin._]
[Illustration: Age 20.
_From a Photo. by W. & D. Downey._]
HARRY FURNISS.
BORN 1854.
At ten years old Mr. Furniss was a pupil at the Wesleyan College School
at Dublin, where he started and edited _The Schoolboy's Punch_, in the
manner described in the extremely interesting interview which appears in
the present number. At twenty he had just come up to London, and was
working for the illustrated papers. At twenty-six he joined the staff of
_Punch_, with which his name has ever since been intimately connected.
[Illustration: AGE 26.
_From a Photo. by C. Watkins, Camden Road, N.W._]
[Illustration: PRESENT DAY.
_From a Photo by Debenham & Gould._]
[Illustration: AGE 17.
_From a Photo, by A. Adams, Aberdeen._]
[Illustration: AGE 24.
_From a Photo. by John Lamb, Aberdeen._]
SIR GEORGE REID, P.R.S.A.
BORN 1842.
Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A., was born in Aberdeen, N.B., in the year 1842,
and when nineteen years of age commenced his artistic studies at the
"Trustees' Academy," in the City of Edinburgh, and shortly afterwards in
Utrecht, under Mollinger. In 1870 he quitted the latter place for Paris,
where he continued his studies; and for several months in 1871 completed
his student life with Israels, at The Hague. He has proved himself a
true artist, and proficient in all departments--both figure and
landscape. Latterly he has applied himself to portrait painting, in
which he finds few competitors. He has done much in the way of book
illustrating. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy
in 1870, and a full member seven years afterwards, receiving on the
death of Sir W. Fettes Douglas the unanimous call of his brethren to
occupy the chair as President.
[Illustration: AGE 36.
_From a Photo. by John Lamb, Aberdeen._]
[Illustration: PRESENT DAY.
_From a Photo. by A. Inglis, Edinburgh._]
COLIN HUNTER, A.R.A.
BORN 1841.
[Illustration: AGE 15.
_From a Daguerreotype._]
Colin Hunter, A.R.A., was born in Glasgow, July 16, 1841, and is the son
of John Hunter, bookseller and postmaster, of Helensburgh. He was
educated in that town, and began painting at twenty years of age, after
four years' clerkship. His education as a painter was derived from
Nature. Mr. Hunter was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in
January, 1884, and is also a Member of the Royal Scottish Water Colour
Society.
[Illustration: AGE 24.
_From a Photo. by Ovinius-Davis, Glasgow._]
[Illustration: AGE 32.
_From a Photo. by Fradelle & Marshall, London._]
[Illustration: PRESENT DAY.
_From a Photograph._]
[Illustration: AGE 20.
_From a Drawing by Carl Hartmann._]
SIR FREDERICK AUGUSTUS ABEL, BART., K.C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S.
BORN 1827.
[Illustration: AGE 28.
_From a Photo. by Maull & Co., London._]
Sir Fredk. A. Abel, Bart., who has lately been prominent before the
public in connection with the recent opening of the Imperial Institute,
of which he has been Organizing Secretary from 1887, was born in London
in 1827, and is known principally in connection with chemistry and
explosives. His published works are: "The Modern History of Gunpowder,"
1866; "Gun Cotton," 1866; "On Explosive Agents," 1872, "Researches in
Explosives," 1875; and "Electricity Applied to Explosive Purposes,"
1884. He is also joint-author with Colonel Bloxam of a "Handbook of
Chemistry." Sir Frederick Abel has been President of the Institute of
Chemistry, the Society of Chemical Industry, and the Society of
Telegraph Engineers and Electricians. He was appointed Associate Member
of the Ordnance Committee in 1867; and is Chemist to the War Department
and likewise Chemical Referee to the Government. In 1883 he was one of
the Royal Commissioners on Accidents in Mines, and was President of the
British Association at the Leeds meeting, 1890. He was created C.B. in
1877, Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, in 1883, knighted in the same year, and
raised to the rank of Baronet at the opening of the Imperial Institute.
[Illustration: AGE 50.
_From a Photograph._]
[Illustration: AGE 65.
_From a Photo. by Barraud, London._]
LORD KELVIN.
BORN 1824.
[Illustration: AGE 28.
_From a Photograph._]
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was born at Belfast on the 26th of June,
1824. His father was a distinguished mathematician, and was Professor of
Mathematics, first in Belfast, and afterwards in Glasgow University. At
a very early age, Lord Kelvin showed extraordinary mathematical ability;
and he passed with great distinction, first through the University of
Glasgow, and then through Cambridge, where he gained the Second
Wranglership and the first Smith's Prize. He became Professor of Natural
Philosophy in the University of Glasgow in 1846, at the age of
twenty-two; and he still holds that office. He was one of the pioneer
band who laid the first successful Atlantic cable, in 1858. In 1866 Her
Majesty conferred the honour of knighthood on him for his distinguished
services to the science and practice of submarine telegraphy. Lord
Kelvin is the author of many inventions. His mariner's compass and
sounding machine have done good service to seamen. His electrical
instruments are the standards all over the world. He is President of the
Royal Society and member of every important scientific society at home
and abroad. In January, 1892, the Queen conferred upon him his peerage.
He held the Colquhoun Sculls, at Cambridge, for two years. He is a
sailor at heart and an enthusiastic yachtsman; and, among amateurs, a
more keen lover of music it would be difficult to find.
[Illustration: AGE 45.
_From a Photo. by John Fergus, Largs._]
[Illustration: PRESENT DAY.
_From a Photo. by W. & D. Downey._]
[Illustration: AGE 2.
_From a Painting._]
[Illustration: AGE 8.
_From a Photo. by R. Tudor Williams, Monmouth._]
[Illustration: AGE 40.
_From a Photo. by M. Guttenberg, Manchester._]
CARDINAL-ARCHBISHOP VAUGHAN.
BORN 1832.
His Eminence Herbert Vaughan, D.D., is the eldest son of the late
Lieut.-Colonel Vaughan, of Courtfield, Herefordshire, born at
Gloucester, April 15, 1832, and was educated at Stonyhurst College,
Lancashire, on the Continent, and in Rome. On the death of Bishop
Turner, he was elected Bishop of Salford, a post which he held until his
recent elevation to the rank of Cardinal-Archbishop.
[Illustration: AGE 25.
_From a Photo. by Jules Géruzet, Brussels._]
[Illustration: PRESENT DAY.
_From a Photo. by G. Felici, Rome._]
[Illustration: COLONEL VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by G. Borelli._]
[Illustration: JOHN S. VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by A. Sauvy._]
[Illustration: KENELM VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by Southwell Bros._]
[Illustration: REGINALD VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by Bradley & Rulofson._]
[Illustration: THE LATE COLONEL VAUGHAN.
_Father of Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster._
_From a Photograph._]
[Illustration: JOSEPH JEROME VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by Bara._]
[Illustration: BERNARD VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by G. Jerrard._]
[Illustration: ROGER BEDE VAUGHAN.
_From a Photo. by J. H. Newman._]
THE FATHER AND BROTHERS OF CARDINAL-ARCHBISHOP VAUGHAN.
ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO
XII.--ZIG-ZAG ACCIPITRAL.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The accipitral birds are the eagles, the vultures, the falcons, the
owls--all those birds that bite and tear unhappy mammals as well as
birds of more peaceful habits than themselves. They have all, it will be
observed, Roman noses, which may be the reason why the Romans adopted
the eagle as a standard; as also it may not. They have striking
characteristics of their own, and have been found very useful by poets
and other people who have to wander off the main subject to make plain
what they mean. The owl is the wiseacre of Nature, the vulture is a vile
harpy, and the eagle is the embodiment of everything great and mighty,
and glorious and free, and swooping and catoptrical. There is very
little to say against the eagle, except that he looks a deal the better
a long way off, like an impressionist picture or a volcano. When the
eagle is flying and swooping, or soaring and staring impudently at the
sun, or reproaching an old feather of his own in the arrow that sticks
in his chest, or mewing his mighty youth (a process I never quite
understood)--when he is doing noble and poetical things of this class at
an elevation of a great many thousand feet above the sea level he is
sublime. When you meet him down below, on his feet, much of the
sublimity is rubbed off.
[Illustration: CHARLEY.]
[Illustration: CORNS,--]
[Illustration: BUNIONS,--]
[Illustration: CHILBLAINS, OR--]
[Illustration: IKINESS?]
There is only one eagle in the world with whom I can claim anything like
a confidential friendship, although I know many. His name is Charley.
If, after a chat with Bob the Bactrian, you will turn your back to the
camel-house and walk past the band-stand toward the eagles' aviaries,
you will observe that the first corner cage is occupied by wedge-tailed
eagles--a most disrespectful name, by-the-bye, I think. There are
various perches, including a large tree-trunk, for these birds; but one
bird, the oldest in the cage, doesn't use them. He keeps on the floor by
the bars facing the place where Suffa Culli and Jung Perchad stand to
take up passengers, and looks out keenly for cats. That is Charley. He
is all right when you know him, is Charley, and I have it on the best
authority that there are no flies on him. A rat on the straggle has been
known to turn up in this aviary and run the gauntlet of all the
cages--till he reached Charley; nothing alive and eatable ever got past
_him_. I have all the esteem and friendship for Charley that any eagle
has a right to expect; but I can't admit the least impressiveness in his
walk. An eagle's feet are not meant to walk with, but to grab things. An
eagle's walk betrays a lamentable bandy-leggedness, and his toe-nails
click awkwardly against the ground. This makes him plant his feet
gingerly and lift them quickly, so that worthy old ladies suppose him to
be afflicted with lameness or bunions, an opinion which disgusts the
bird, as you may observe for yourself; for you will never find an eagle
in these Gardens submitting himself to be fondled by an old lady
visitor. It is by way of repudiating any suggestion of bunions that the
eagle adopts a raffish, off-hand, chickaleary sort of roll in the gait,
so that altogether, especially as viewed from behind, a walking eagle
has an appearance of perpetually knocking 'em in the Old Kent Road. On
Charley's next birthday I shall present him, I think, with a proper
pearly suit, with kicksies cut saucy over the trotters, and an artful
fakement down the side, if the Society will allow me.
[Illustration: A PASSING SNACK.]
[Illustration: DINNER AHOY!]
There is nothing in the world that pleases an eagle better at
dinner-time than a prime piece of cat. Charley tells me that, upon the
whole, he prefers a good, plump, mouse-fed tabby; he adds that he never
yet heard of a tame eagle being kept at a sausage shop, though he would
like a situation of that sort himself, very much. The stoop of a free
eagle as it takes a living victim is, no doubt, a fine thing, except for
the victim; but the grabbing of cut-up food here in captivity is merely
comic. The eagle, with his Whitechapel lurch, makes for the morsel and
takes it in his stride; then he stands on it in a manner somehow
suggesting pattens, and pecks away at the hair--if, luckily, he has
secured a furry piece. I am not intimate with any eagle but Charley, but
I am very friendly with all of them--golden, tawny, white-tailed, and
the rest, with their scowls and their odd winks--all but one other of
the wedge-tailers, who stays for ever at the top of the tree trunk and
looks out westward, trying to distinguish the cats in the gardens of St.
John's Wood; he is reserved as well as uppish, and I don't know him to
speak to.
[Illustration: UNCIVIL BAWLINGS.]
I am pretty intimate with many of the owls. The owl I know least is a
little Scops owl, kept alone in the insect-house. He has for next-door
neighbour a sad old reprobate--Cocky, the big Triton cockatoo--who
abuses him horribly. The fact is, they both occupy a recess which once
Cocky had all to himself, and now Cocky bullies the intruder up hill and
down dale; although little Scops would gladly go somewhere else if he
could, and takes no notice of Cocky's uncivil bawlings further than to
lift his near wing apprehensively at each outburst. He and I have not
been able to improve our acquaintance greatly, partly because he is out
of reach, and partly because Cocky's conversation occupies most of his
time.
[Illustration: WHAT!]
[Illustration: WELL--]
[Illustration: DID YOU EVER!]
[Illustration: OF ALL THE--!]
The Zoo owls are a lamentably scattered family. Another Scops owl, with
one eye, lives in the eastern aviary, in Church's care. He is a
charming, furious little ruffian (I am speaking of the owl, and not of
Church), and perfectly ready to peck any living thing, quite
irrespective of size. Where he lost his eye is a story of his own, for
he was first met with but one. He sits on his perch with a furious cock
of the ears--which are not ears at all, but feathers--with the aspect of
being permanently prepared to repel boarders; and the only thing that
could possibly add to his fierceness of appearance would be a patch over
the sight of the demolished eye; a little present I would gladly make
myself, if he would let me.
[Illustration: THE SCOWLING SCOPS.]
He lives just underneath a much less savage little Naked-foot Owl, who
doesn't resent your existence with his beak, but gazes at you with a
most extreme air of shocked surprise. He doesn't attack you bodily for
standing on this earth on your own feet--he is too much grieved and
scandalized. He looks at you as a teetotal lady of the Anti-Gambling
League would look at her nephew if he offered to toss her for whiskies.
He follows you with his glare of outraged propriety till you shrink
behind Church and sneak away, with an indescribable feeling of personal
depravity previously unknown. Why should this pharisaical little bird
make one feel a criminal? As a matter of fact, he is nothing but a
raffish fly-by-night himself; and his pious horror is assumed, I
believe, as much to keep his eyes wide open and him awake as to impose
on one.
The owls' cages proper are away behind the llamas' house, and here you
may study owl nature in plenty; and you may observe the owls, like
people sitting through a long sermon, affecting various concealments and
excuses for going to sleep in the daytime. The milky eagle-owl pretends
to be waiting for a friend who never keeps his appointment. You come
upon him as he is dozing away quietly; he sees you just between his
eyelids, and at once stares angrily down the path as if he were sick of
waiting, and the other owl already half an hour overdue. Of course there
is no owl coming, so he shakes his head testily and half shuts his eyes.
If you go away then, he goes to sleep again. If you stay, he presently
makes another pretence of pulling out his watch and wondering if that
owl is ever coming. He has practised the transparent deception so long
that he does it now mechanically, and sleeps, I believe, or nearly so,
through the whole process. The oriental owl does it rather differently.
He doesn't open his eyes when you first wake him--this in order to give
greater verisimilitude to his pretence of profound meditation; he wishes
you to understand that it is not your presence that causes him to open
his eyes, but the natural course of his philosophical speculations. As a
pundit, he disdains to appear to observe you; so he gazes solemnly at a
vast space with nothing whatever for its centre. He sees you, but he
knows you for a creature that never carries raw meat with it, like a
keeper; a creature beneath the notice of _Bubo orientalis_.
[Illustration: MILKY REPOSE.]
[Illustration: IS HE COMING?]
[Illustration: WHAT A NUISANCE!]
As a song-bird, the owl is not a conspicuous success. Perhaps he has
learned this in the Zoo, for he cannot be induced to perform during
visiting hours. He is a reserved person, and exclusive. If you, as a
stranger, attempt to scrape his acquaintance, he meets you with an
indignant stare--confound your impudence! Nothing in this world can
present such a picture of offended, astounded dignity as an owl. I often
wonder what he said when Noah ordered him peremptorily into the Ark. As
for myself, I should as soon think of ordering one of the beadles at the
Bank.
[Illustration: NOT YET?]
[Illustration: OH, HANG IT!]
Many worthy owls, long since passed away as living things, now exist in
their astral forms as pepper-boxes and tobacco-jars. They probably
belonged, in life, to the same species as a friend of mine here, who
exhibits one of their chief physical features. He sits immovably still,
so far as his body--his jar or pepper-reservoir--is concerned; indeed,
if he is not disturbed, he sits immovably altogether, and sleeps. When
he is disturbed he wakes in instalments, opening one eye at a time. He
fixes you with his wild, fiery eye, his indignant stare. Start to walk
round him; the head turns, and the stare follows you, with no movement
whatever of the part containing the pepper. The head slowly turns and
turns, without the smallest indication of stopping anywhere. I never
tempted it farther than once round, but walked back the other way, for
fear of strangling a valuable bird. Besides, I remembered an owl
pepper-box once, which became loose in the screw through continual
turning, so that the head fell off into your plate, and all the pepper
after it.
[Illustration]
The biggest owls are the eagle-owls. The eagle-owls here occupy a
similar sort of situation to that of the hermit in an old tea-garden. In
a secluded nook behind the camel-house a brick-built cave is kept in a
wire cage, which not only hinders the owls from escaping, but prevents
them taking the cave with them if they do. The cave is fitted up with
the proper quantity of weird gloom and several convenient perches; the
perches, however, are indistinct, because the gloom is obvious. In the
midst of it you may see two fiery eyes, like the fire-balls from a Roman
candle, and nothing else. This is the most one often has a chance of
seeing here in bright day. Often the eagle-owls are asleep, and then you
do not even see the fireworks. I know the big eagle-owl fairly well;
that is to say, I am on snarling terms with him. But once he has settled
in his cave he won't come out, even when I call him Zadkiel.
[Illustration: THE EAGLE-OWLS' RETREAT.]
There is nothing much more grotesque than a row of small barn owls, just
awakened from sleep and curious about the disturber. There is something
about the odd gaze and twist of the neck that irresistibly reminds me of
an illustration in an Old Saxon or Early English manuscript.
[Illustration: SLEEP.]
[Illustration: WHO SAID RATS?]
[Illustration: THE ANGOLA.]
I am not particularly friendly with any of the vultures. Walk past their
cages with the determination to ingratiate yourself with them. You will
change your mind. There are very few birds that I should not like to
keep as pets if I had the room, but the vulture is the first of them. I
don't know any kind of vulture whose personal appearance wouldn't hang
him at a court of Judge Lynch. The least unpleasant-looking of the lot
is the little Angola vulture, who is put among the kites; and she is bad
enough: a horrible eighteenth-century painted and powdered old woman; a
Pompadour of ninety. The large bearded vulture is not only an
uncompanionable fellow to look at, but he doesn't behave respectably. It
is not respectable to hurl yourself bodily against anybody looking over
a precipice and unaware of your presence, so as to break him up on the
rocks below, and dine off his prime cuts. I have no doubt that
Self--(Self, by-the-bye, keeps eagles and vultures as well as
camels)--has any amount of sympathy for his charges, but who _could_
make a pet of a turkey-vulture, with its nasty, raw-looking red head, or
of a cinereous vulture, with its unwholesome eyes and its
unclean-looking blue wattle? No, I am not over-fond of a vulture. He is
always a dissipated-looking ruffian, of boiled eye and blotchy
complexion, and you know as you look at him that he would prefer to see
you dead rather than alive, so that he might safely take your eyes by
way of an appetizer, and forthwith proceed to lift away your softer
pieces preparatory to strolling under your ribs like a jackdaw in a cage
much too small. He sits there placid, unwinsome, and patient; waiting
for you to die. But he has his little vanities. He is tremendously
proud of his wings--and they certainly are wings to astonish. On a warm
day he likes to open them for coolness, but often he makes this a mere
excuse for showing off. He waits till some easily-impressed visitor
comes along--not a regular frequenter. Then he stands up and spreads his
great pinions abroad, and perhaps turns about, and the visitor is duly
impressed. So the vulture stands and receives the admiration, hoping the
while that the visitor has heart disease, and will drop dead where he
stands. And when the visitor walks off without dying the old harpy lets
his wings fall open, ready for somebody else.
[Illustration]
_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes._
XIX.--THE ADVENTURE OF THE REIGATE SQUIRE.
BY A. CONAN DOYLE.
It was some time before the health of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
recovered from the strain caused by his immense exertions in the spring
of '87. The whole question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the
colossal schemes of Baron Maupertins are too recent in the minds of the
public, and are too intimately concerned with politics and finance, to
be fitting subjects for this series of sketches. They led, however, in
an indirect fashion to a singular and complex problem, which gave my
friend an opportunity of demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among
the many with which he waged his life-long battle against crime.
On referring to my notes, I see that it was upon the 14th of April that
I received a telegram from Lyons, which informed me that Holmes was
lying ill in the Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his
sick room, and was relieved to find that there was nothing formidable in
his symptoms. His iron constitution, however, had broken down under the
strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during
which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day, and had
more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a
stretch. The triumphant issue of his labours could not save him from
reaction after so terrible an exertion, and at a time when Europe was
ringing with his name, and when his room was literally ankle-deep with
congratulatory telegrams, I found him a prey to the blackest depression.
Even the knowledge that he had succeeded where the police of three
countries had failed, and that he had out-manoeuvred at every point
the most accomplished swindler in Europe, were insufficient to rouse him
from his nervous prostration.