If working-men generally take to courses like these, they will very soon vindicate their order from the accusation of drunkenness which Liquor LAWSON, DAWSON BURNS, and their followers, put forward as a pretext for soliciting the whole people to let themselves be placed under restraint, like idiots or babies. The sober and earnest working-men, drinking their beer in moderation, will show themselves to be really the same flesh and blood with the gentlemen who sip their claret soberly, and are so kind as to interest themselves in the promotion of schemes for withholding their poorer kind from indulgence in "intoxicating liquors." But then the occupation of the United Kingdom Alliance will be gone. That is to say, they will be deprived of all excuse for vociferating, plotting, and conspiring to have the pleasure of regulating the habits of others. * * * * * =Parental Present.= THOUGH we have thus far entered on January, the window of a shop in Fleet Street still exhibits a card bearing the legend of "Presents for Christmas." This appears amid a lot of walking-sticks, where it is somewhat suggestive. Perhaps too many schoolboys generally come home for the holidays would receive the most suitable Christmas-box a fond Father could present them with if he were to give them the Stick. [_Mrs. Punch._ "Brute!"] * * * * * [Illustration: "HOUSEHOLD WORDS." _Young Person_ (_on taking a Situation with Maiden Lady_). "IN THE COURSE OF CONVERSATION, SHALL I ADDRESS YOU AS _MISS_ OR _MUM_?"!!] * * * * * THE "PHANTOM BOARD." (_See MR. VERNON LUSHINGTON'S evidence before the Megaera Commission_.) A DARKLING place, of shadowy space, Reached by a silent stair; A skeleton clock, with a dusty face, That marks time in the air, To five grey ghosts, in blue and gold lace, Each in ghost of a board-room chair. Their red-tape is dust, their penknives are rust, The ink in each standish is sere; Their ghost-quills glide betwixt margins wide Of foolscap, that blanks appear; And their dead tongues' prose into dead ears goes, And out at as dead an ear! But on file and floor, and the tables o'er, And in pigeon-holes well stored, Are letters many, and papers more-- An ever-growing hoard! No phantom of business, albeit before My Lords of a Phantom Board! So much work to be done, and, alive, but one To utter five phantoms' will! The hours they run, but on LUSHINGTON The papers are pouring still-- And how record for a Phantom Board, With a merely mortal quill?