_Punch_ had for many years ceased from criticizing the manners of medical students, which occupied so much of his attention fifty years earlier; the most serious of his comments on professional manners were excited by "ragging" amongst officers in the Army. The protest, which he printed in 1896, purported to come from the ranks, and is based on the assumption that leadership was impaired when officers forgot to be gentlemen. At the Universities, _Punch_ was evidently concerned by the multiplication of prigs. Early in the new century Balliol was, as usual, singled out as the principal hot-bed for the propagation of this type, but _Punch_ paid that college a remarkable if reluctant tribute. He enumerated all the different species of undergraduates to be found there; keen laborious Scots, Ruskinite road-builders, and converts to Buddhist, Gnostic and Agnostic theories; but admitted that if Balliol contained all the cranks, it also contained the coming men--the men who would count. That curious Balliol product which emerged about this time, the "intellectual 'blood,'" seems to have escaped _Punch's_ notice. At the end of the last century he notes the invasion of schools by the bicycle, and speculates fantastically on its results. As a matter of fact, bikes were afterwards largely proscribed in public and private schools, and the ban has not even yet been wholly removed. [Illustration: ON THE RHINE FIRST TOURIST: "Care to use these glasses?" SECOND TOURIST: "No, thanks. Seen it all on the cinema 't 'ome!"] [Sidenote: _An Appeal to Santa Claus_] Fashion has many phases; and children's Christmas presents reflect the popular tastes of the moment. In 1908 _Punch_ printed the appeal of a little girl to Santa Claus to help her to avoid getting as many as possible of the same presents. This last Christmas it had been "perfectly absurd"--an endless iteration of _Peter Pan_ story books, Golliwogs and copies of _Alice in Wonderland_, illustrated by Rackham and other artists. The sacrilegious attempt to supersede Tenniel's classical designs naturally met with no sympathy from _Punch_, and, what is more to the point, did not prove a success. Not a few of _Punch's_ old social butts and pet aversions disappear at the end of the century--including the old "'Arry." One of 'Arry's last efforts was to rejoice over the defeat of women at Oxford, and another was to describe how he was teaching his "best girl" how to pedal. The "Twelve Labours of 'Arry," as depicted by Phil May in the Almanack for 1896, in which he is seen on the rink, the river, hunting, shooting, driving tandem, boxing, playing cricket, golfing, bicycling, etc., introduce a new type indistinguishable from the "new rich" in dress and deportment. The new type of tourist depicted in 1912 lacks the exuberance of the old, and his _nil admirari_ attitude is attributed to the "educative" influence of the "pictures." FASHION IN DRESS