Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

Another subject was restless to a degree, and walked about the room instead of permitting me to draw him.

"Hope you won't keep me very long," he said, "I'm never still for a moment, I'm always walking about my room. You'd better do me with a book in my hand as though I were dictating to my clerk."

I was rather disconcerted, for this was not to be a caricature, but a characteristic portrait.

"But," I said, "your friends won't know you so. Anyway, go on walking."

I made little notes as I watched him, and after he had been walking some time I began to hope that he would be getting tired, when he stopped short and said:—

"No! You'd better do me with my hand on my waistcoat."

"Very well," I replied, "we'll begin again."

In this position I began a drawing of him, when he decided it would not do.

"Oh, well," I said, "sometimes you sit down, don't you? And it seems to me a very natural thing to do. Suppose I draw you that way?"

Mark Twain was another subject who came under the category of the "walkers." I had a good deal of difficulty in getting hold of him, but when I eventually caught him at his hotel, I found him decidedly impatient.