DEAR MR. PUNCH,--Your article about Christmas presents was a great success. I took your advice about the silk stockings, and sent the following verses with them, which some of your married readers may care to cut out and keep for future use:-- Your stockings once, on Christmas Eve, Would hang, your cot adorning, And Father Christmas, we believe, Would fill them ere the morning; But since he spied your dainty toes To exchange the parts he's willing: He thinks it's his to send the hose And yours to find the filling. He lays his offerings at your feet And hopes you won't deride them, For he has nothing half so neat As you to put inside them. There! I can only repeat that the results were excellent, and express my gratitude to you for the same. Yours obediently, GRATEFUL HUSBAND. P.S.--The ties I got this time were quite all right; she too must have read your article. * * * * * NATURE AND ART. _To Betty, who can afford to defy the laws of symmetry._ [Being reflections on the old theory, recently developed before the Hellenic Society by Mr. JAY HAMBRIDGE, that certain formulæ of proportions found in nature--notably in the normal ratio between a man's height and the span of his outstretched arms (2: [**square root] 5)--constituted the basis of symmetry in the art of the Greeks and, earlier, of the Egyptians.] Betty, I fear you don't conform Precisely to the female norm From dainty foot to charming noddle, But, closely measured, span by span, Seem built upon a private plan Not found in ANNIE KELLERMAN Or in the well-known Melos model. If you compare your width and height-- Arms horizontal, left and right-- With ancient types of pure perfection, The ratio may not, it's true, Be as the root of 5 to 2, But what, my dear, has that to do With laws of natural selection? Let Mr. HAMBRIDGE to your shape Apply his T-square and his tape, And wish that you were more archaic; Why should I care? I love you best For what no compasses can test, For graces not to be expressed In terms however algebraic. I love you for the lips and eyes That none may hope to standardize On any system known to Hellas; And what I like about your smile Has no relation to the style Of any pyramid of Nile Figured by mathematic fellahs. Though your proportions mayn't agree With FECHNER'S pedant formulæ, I don't complain of such disparity; Too flawless that perfection shows; For me a larger comfort flows From human failings (take your nose-- I like its quaint irregularity). Indeed I love you best of all For those defects by which you fall Short of the pattern you should follow; As I would fain be loved for mine, Speaking as one whose own design Lacks something of the perfect line Affected by the young Apollo. O. S. * * * * *