On Friday, April 25th, a special jury gave Mr. Sala,
the veteran journalist, a verdict for £5 in his slander action against Mr. Furniss, the caricaturist. In an " after-supper speech" at a literary club at Nottingham, Mr. Furniss told a somewhat pointless story of how Mr. Sala, who it appears began life as an art-student, sent in for the competition at the Academy Schools a drawing of a foot with six toes to it. -" The examiner," said Mr. Furniss, "having counted these toes, pointed the matter out to Mr. Sala, who did not get into the schools ; so now he was the art critic of the Daily Telegraph." Mr. Sala swore in the witness-box that he had never attempted to enter the Academy Schools, and that " it was absurdly and wickedly false to say the examiners had ever counted six toes on his drawing of a foot." Technically, no doubt, Mr. Sala was slandered ; but a bald it not have been much more dignified for him to have•iet the whole thing alone P The defendant's attack may have been in bad taste; but at the same time, no one was 01 least likely to imagine that Mr. Sala did not know the number of toes on the human foot. His action shows once agam how sensitive men are in regard to accusations of ignorance on subjects which are not their real vocation, but in which they are proud of exceptional knowledge. Mr. Sala, in spite of his great journalistic reputation, would have been serenely indifferent to the charge of being unable to write.
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