Deal with the Stores and the private accounts will look after themselves. A penny saved by avoiding an omnibus is a florin lost by taking a Hansom cab. A single swallow never represents a family Christmas dinner. Enough is often dearer than a feast, especially if you take the last at the house of a friend. Send an acquaintance an old card about Christmas on Boxing Day, and he will return you a second-hand greeting on the 2nd of January anent the New Year. Give credit at Christmas and you will find you still have money owing to you at Easter. Christmas comes but once a year, and bores for the length of a century. * * * * * [Illustration: A QUESTION OF THE SENSES. _First County Councillor._ "I'M TOLD THE _ACOUSTICS_ OF THIS HALL LEAVE MUCH TO BE DESIRED, MR. BROWN!" _Second C. C._ (_delicately sniffing_). "INDEED, SIR POMPEY? CAN'T SAY AS I PERCEIVE ANYTHINK AMISS, MYSELF; AND MY NOSE IS PRETTY SHARP, TOO!"] * * * * * ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P. _House of Commons, Monday, December 11._--Remarkable testimony to catholicity of DICKY TEMPLE'S mind that he should just now have been talking about Siam. Various other topics to the fore. The Featherstone inquiry; Matabeleland, in which the SAGE OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE takes unfaltering interest; Betterment, and, incidentally, the Parish Councils Bill. Only TEMPLE thinks of remote, unfriended, solitary Siam. Wants to know when papers including most recent correspondence will be published? EDWARD GREY taken at a disadvantage. Wasn't thinking of Siam. Just been looking up map to find out precise situation of Kilia mouth of the Danube. CAP'EN TOMMY BOWLES been, so to speak, jumping down it. Suspects the CZAR of iniquitous intention in this part of the world. CZAR evidently thought the CAP'EN, being intent on the education of MUNDELLA in nautical affairs, would not have time to keep an eye on the Kilia mouth of the Danube. CZAR knows better now. So does EDWARD GREY. Spent quite an interesting quarter of an hour with the map, and came at last upon this particular outlet. Just congratulating himself that, as a rule, British rivers have only one mouth, when TEMPLE sprang Siam upon him. "Do you know," said Member for Sark, looking admiringly at the great historiographer of Parliament, "I never see TEMPLE on his legs but I think of OVID'S epitaph on the parrot. You remember how it runs in English?-- 'I please the fair. So much this stone doth tell. What more? I talked, and, for a bird, talked well.'