MY DEAR MR. PUNCH,--SMITH Minor, who is staying at our house for part of the holidays, said what good fun it would be to try the MACDOUGALL plan on my Uncle from India. He is always cold and shivering. We waited till he was having a nap after dinner in the arm-chair, and we coated him over with butter that SMITH Minor got from Cook. (Cook never will give _me_ butter.) When we got to his hair he unfortunately woke up, so that is probably why the plan did not succeed. We thought he would be pleased to feel warmer, but he wasn't. Uncles are often ungrateful, SMITH Minor says. And it _did_ succeed in one way, because he seemed awfully hot and red in the face when he found what we had been doing. Perhaps we ought not to have tried smearing him on his clothes, but how could we get his clothes off without waking him? SMITH Minor says it's a pity we didn't drug him. N.B.--I have been stopped going to the Pantomime for this, and SMITH Minor is to be sent home! Your dejected TOMMY. *** SIR,--I want to bring an action against Messrs. MACDOUGALL, of Mark Lane. I tried their smearing plan on a horse in my stable that had a huge appetite, and was always getting cold if left out in the wet. I used paraffin, and at first the animal seemed really grateful. In the night I was called up by a fearful noise, and found that the horse's appetite had not got at all less owing to the oil; on the contrary, it seemed to have eaten up most of the woodwork of the stable, and was plunging about madly. The paraffin caught light, and the stable was burned, and the horse too. In future I shall feed my horse in the usual way, not on the outside. Yours, TITUS OATS. * * * * * [Illustration: THE THIN BROWN LINE.] ["Decidedly the most gratifying feature in the accounts of these engagements which have reached us, is the proof which they contain of the remarkable progress in all soldierly qualities made by the fellaheen forces, under the guidance and instruction of their British Officers."--_The Times._] _Tommy Atkins, loquitur_:-- "WE'VE fought with many men acrost the seas, And some of 'em was brave, an' some was not." (So Mister KIPLING says. His 'ealth, boys, please! '_E_ doesn't give us TOMMIES Tommy-rot.) We didn't think you over-full of pluck, When you scuttled from our baynicks like wild 'orses; But you're mendin', an' 'ere's wishing of you luck! Wich you're proving an addition to our forces. So 'ere's _to_ you, though 'tis true that at El Teb you cut and ran; You're improvin' from a scuttler to a first-class fighting man; You can 'old your own at present when the bullets hiss and buzz, And in time you may be equal to a round with Fuzzy-Wuz!