But Christmas presents, even at a moderate rate of charge, may, if one has a large circle of acquaintance, carry one over the hedge, as Mr. Brooke said; and here is the scope and function of the Christmas Card. Few people have bought more Christmas cards in a lifetime than the present writer; and, out of a vast experience, he would offer one word of friendly counsel to the card-sender. Do not accumulate the cards which you receive this Christmas and distribute them among your friends next Christmas, for, if you do, as sure as fate you will one day return a card to the sender; and old friendships and profitable connexions have been severed by such miscarriages. Of Christmas amusements I can say little. My notion of them is chiefly derived from "Happy Thoughts," where Byng suggests some "Christmassy sort of thing" to amuse his guests, and fails to gratify even his Half-Aunt. My infancy was spent in the country, remote from Dances and Theatres, Pantomimes and Panoramas. "The Classic Walls of Old Drury" never welcomed me on Boxing Night. Certainly a Christmas Tree and a stocking full of presents appealed to that acquisitive instinct which is fully as strong in infancy as in old age; but, though exceedingly young in my time, I never was young enough to be amused by a Snow-Man or dangerously excited by Blind Man's Buff. Looking back, like Tennyson's "many-wintered crow," on these Christmases of infancy, I have sometimes asked myself whether I lost much by my aloofness from the normal merriment of youth. Mr. Anstey Guthrie knows the secret heart of English boyhood more accurately than most of us, and when I read his description of a Christmas party I am inclined to be thankful that my lot was cast a good many miles beyond the cab-radius. "Why couldn't you come to our party on Twelfth-night? We had great larks. I wish you'd been there." "I had to go to young Skidmore's instead," said a pale, spiteful-looking boy with fair hair, carefully parted in the middle. "It was like his cheek to ask me, but I thought I'd go, you know, just to see what it was like." "What was it like?" asked one or two near him, languidly. "Oh, awfully slow! They've a poky little house in Brompton somewhere, and there was no dancing, only boshy games and a conjuror, without any presents. And, oh! I say, at supper there was a big cake on the table, and no one was allowed to cut it, because it was hired. They're so poor, you know. Skidmore's pater is only a clerk, and you should see his sisters!" All my sympathies are with Skidmore, and I think that the fair-haired boy was an unmitigated beast, and cad, and snob. But there is an awful verisimilitude about "Boshy Games and a Conjuror," and I bless the fate which allowed me to grow up in ignorance of Christmas Parties. XXXVII NEW YEAR'S DAY