The British Boxing-day is well known, both as to its customs and its origin. The Christmas-box, or thrift-box, is still to be seen in barber shops in Wales, fastened to the wall, or standing conveniently under the looking-glass among the pots and brushes. At one time the custom became such a nuisance throughout Britain that an outcry was raised about it. It got to that pass that the butcher and baker would send their apprentices around among their customers to levy contributions. The English Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in 1837, sent a circular to the different embassies requesting their excellencies and chargés d'affaires to discontinue the customary Christmas-boxes to the 'messengers of the Foreign Department, domestic servants of Viscount Palmerston, foreign postmen, etc.' The nuisance is hardly less prevalent now. The faithful postman in Wales not only expects to be remembered at Christmas, but he expects to be given a precise sum, and if he does not get it he is capable of asking for it. In one case, a postman accustomed to receive five shillings at a certain office, on asking for his 'box,' was told the usual donor was absent in London, whereupon he requested the clerk to write up to him in London immediately on the subject. These things strike a stranger as very singular, among a people usually so self-respecting. Warnings are from time to time issued on this subject by those in authority, but the custom is likely to survive so long as it is not ranked outright with beggary. Like the Christmas-tree, it is a graceful thing among the children, or among friends or household servants, if spontaneous; but as a tax, it is an odious perversion.[132] FOOTNOTE: [132] Among those who last Christmas applied at my house for 'his box, sir, if you please' (as my maid put it), quite as a matter of course, were the postman, the leader of the waits, the boy who brings the daily newspapers, the bookseller's boy, the chimney-sweep, the dustman, the grocer's man, etc., etc., no one of whom I had ever set eyes on. The equal of this I never encountered, except in Paris, on the _jour de l'an_. VI.