[Illustration: CHEQUE FOR 5-1/2D. PASSED THROUGH TWO BANKS AND PAID. I SIGNED IT _backwards_, AND IT WAS CANCELLED BY CLERK _backwards_.]
I sent my _Punch_ friend a cheque, here reproduced, for the sum of 5-1/2_d._, payable to "Lynnlay Sam Bourne, Esqre," signed by me backwards, crossed "Don't you wish you may get it and go." Sambourne endorsed it "L. Sam. Bourne," and sent it to his bank. The clerk went one better, and wrote "Cancelled" _backwards_ across my reversed signature. It passed through my bank, and the money was paid. This is probably unique in the history of banking.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY IRVING WRITES HIS NAME BACKWARDS.]
_A propos_ of writing backwards, in days when artists made their drawings on wood everything of course had to be reversed, and writing backwards became quite easy. To this day I can write backwards nearly as quickly as I write in the ordinary way. One night at supper I was explaining this, and furthermore told my friends that they themselves could write backwards--in fact, they could not avoid doing so. Not of course on the table, as I was doing, but by placing the sheet of paper against the table underneath, and writing with the point upwards. Perhaps my reader will try--and see the effect. For encouragement here are a few of the first attempts on that particular evening.
[Illustration: SIR HENRY IRVING'S ATTEMPT.]
[Illustration: MR. J. L. TOOLE'S FIRST ATTEMPT.]
[Illustration: MR. J. L. TOOLE'S SECOND ATTEMPT.]
A few years ago a banquet was given at the Mansion House to the representatives of French art; several English painters and others interested in art were invited to meet them. Previous to being presented to the Lord Mayor, every guest was requested to sign an autograph album--an unusual proceeding, I think, at a City dinner. Were I Lord Mayor I would compel my guests to sign their names--not on arrival, but when leaving the Mansion House, and thus possess an autograph album of erratic graphology, and one worth studying. In company with my friend Mr. Whitworth Wallis, the curator of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, I entered the Mansion House, when we were immediately accosted by a powdered flunkey in gorgeous uniform, in possession of the autograph album, who presented a truly magnificent pen at us, and in peremptory tones demanded our life or our signatures. Whitworth Wallis wrote his first, with a dash and confidence. I stood by and admired. "Oh," I said, taking the pen, "that's not half a dash; let me show you mine."