_Mr. Punch_ had expected to be carried into one of the courts of the Alhambra, but, in lieu of this, he found himself gazing at a lady, beautiful beyond compare. For a moment he was so lost in admiration, that he almost forgot himself, and was about to kiss her. Remembering, however, that he was a married man, and that his better half might object to the very natural, but (under the circumstances) highly improper transaction, he paused, and changed his kiss into a beaming smile. He was a little _chagrined_, however, to notice that the beautiful creature was so intent upon watching some distant attraction, that she had no eyes for him, nor, in fact, for anyone else. "What can she be looking at?" he murmured. "How lovely she is with her heightened colour, her parted lips, her soul beaming through her lustrous dark eyes!" Then he uttered an exclamation of disgust when he found that the lady was giving her entire attention to a bull-fight! "I think I have had enough of this! We may have something of the same sort in our courts during a trial for murder; but, as a rule, _our_ female blood-hungerers are either podgy matrons of sixty, or skinny old maids, of no (admitted) age at all! So give me England--dear old England!" He was set down at the Cannon Street Railway Station, and, collecting his luggage (which had followed by _Grande Vitesse_), he called a cab, and drove to Fleet Street. And once more he was back in the ancestral halls, which had been decorated for the occasion with holly, and its white-berried companion. So, while TOBY played "_Home, Sweet Home!_" _Mr. Punch_ kissed BRITANNIA under the Mistletoe, and wished her and the whole world, in a Wassail-bowl, A MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! * * * * * A HAGGARD ANNUAL. (_Specially written by Walker Weird, to usher in the Year 1890_) [Illustration] UNREDD, the writer, and SPOYLPAPEROS, the sketcher, were in the presence of a weird figure, that grotesquely genuflected before them. "Fear not, my sons," explained the WEIRD, cutting a sad caper; "fear not. _He-who-must-be-obeyed_ has need of ye. And, as _He_ has need, ye must be well-bred," as we say in the yeast. "And you are?--" "The Ghost of a Joke!" murmured the extinct witticism, sadly; "and my name is SILLIBILLI." And then a strange thing happened.