"The cut is admirable in every way. I have nearly finished the drawing of 'The Royal Family of France,' and will send it immediately it is done. I hope you will have the 'Royal Family' done by Dalziels', as you said it should be; they would manage the faces much better than——
"Yours ever truly,
"E. M. Ward."
Almost as a matter of course we became associated with Kenny Meadows, a clever, erratic genius, and an artist of great ability. He had a wonderful and strangely fanciful imagination, and perhaps will be best known in time to come by his "Illustrated Shakespeare" and his "Heads of the People"; there is one other work which is not likely to be forgotten, "A Head of 'Old Father Christmas,'" which did good service for a Christmas number of the Illustrated London News. He was intimately connected with Orrin Smith, the distinguished wood engraver; their earliest work being character sketches and heads of the people done for Bell's Life in London, which was somewhat a pioneer in illustrated journalism. Meadows at that time was generally known as "Iron Jack," from the fact of his robust health, which he attributed entirely to a simple style of living in his early life, much of which was spent in a lighthouse, where, he declared, they never had enough to eat. He said, "I used to devour my food like a ravening wolf."
No amount of alcohol ever appeared to hurt him, and to those who suffered from excess of indulgence he attributed it entirely to over-eating in their early days, before the constitution was fairly and properly formed.
"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild."
"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."—Milton.