There is a curious custom still carried out at Queen's College, Oxford. On the feast of the Circumcision the bursar gives to every member a needle and thread, adding the injunction, "Take this and be thrifty." It is said, I know not with what truth, that it is to commemorate the name of the founder, Robert Egglesfield--by the visible pun, _aiguille_ (needle) and _fil_ (thread). CHAPTER XXV Christ-tide Literature--Christmas Cards--Their Origin--Lamplighter's Verses--Watchman's Verses--Christmas Pieces. The literature specially designed nowadays for Christmas reading is certainly not of a high order, whether we take books--which are issued at this time by the hundred--or the special numbers of magazines and newspapers, all of which have rubbishing stories with some tag in them relating to Christ-tide. Tales of ghosts, etc., were at one time very fashionable, and even Dickens pandered to this miserable style of writing, not enhancing his reputation thereby. Akin in merit to this literature are the mottoes we find in the _bon bon_ crackers, and the verses on Christmas cards, which are on a par with those which adorned the defunct valentine. When first Christmas cards came into vogue they were expensive and comparatively good; now they are simply rubbish, and generally have no allusion either in the design, or doggrel to Christ-tide, to which they owe their existence. Their origin was thoroughly threshed out in _Notes and Queries_, and I give the correspondence thereon (6th series, v. 155). "Christmas cards were first published and issued from Summerly's _Home Treasury_ Office, 12 Old Bond Street, in the year 1846. The design was drawn by J.C. Horsley, R.A., at the suggestion of Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., and carried out by De la Rue and Co." (_Ib._ 376) "Mr. Platt is somewhat in error in stating that the first Christmas card was carried out by De la Rue and Co. This firm republished it last year (1881) in chromo-lithography, but in 1846 it was produced in outline by lithography, and coloured by hand by a colourer of that time named Mason, when it could not have been sold for less than a shilling. Last year chromo-lithography enabled it to be produced for two pence. The original publisher was Mr. Joseph Cundall. It may be well to place the design on record. A trellis of rustic work in the Germanesque style divided the card into a centre and two side panels. The sides were filled by representations of the feeding of the hungry and the clothing of the naked; in the central compartment a family party was shown at table--an old man and woman, a maiden and her young man, and several children,--and they were pictured drinking healths in wine. On this ground certain total abstainers have called in question the morality of Mr. Horsley's design."