The plate then on the other side represents the earliest, and not the least important, of the worldly ceremonies of the day, the due observance thereof being essential to the due observance of that later ceremony which no man holds to be unimportant, least of all on Christmas Day, the dinner. But, "oh! Molly Dumpling! oh! thou cook!" if that clock of thine be right, thou art far behindhand with thy work! Thou shouldst have risen when thou wast disturbed by the Waits at three o'clock this morning! To have discharged thy duty faithfully, thou shouldst have consigned that huge pudding at least two hours earlier to the reeking caldron! We are informed by those who understand such matters, that a plum pudding of the ordinary size requires from ten to twelve hours boiling; so that a pudding calculated for the appetites of such a party as our artist has assembled further on, for its consumption, and due regard being had to the somewhat earlier hour than on days in general at which a Christmas dinner is commonly discussed, should have found its way into the boiler certainly before six o'clock. Molly evidently wants a word of advice from the ancient bellman:-- "Up, Doll, Peg, Susan! You all spoke to me Betimes to call you, and 'tis now past three, Get up on your but-ends, and rub your eyes, For shame, no longer lye abed, but rise; The pewter still to scow'r and house to clean, And you abed! good girls, what is't you mean?" On the subject of the identity of the modern plum pudding with the ancient _hackin_, we are furnished with the following curious remarks by Mr. Crofton Croker, which we think well worth submitting for the consideration of the curious in such matters. "The 'hackin,'" says that amusing old tract, entitled 'Round about our Coal Fire,' "'must be boiled by daybreak, or else two young men must take the maiden [i. e., the cook] by the arms, and run her round the market-place, till she is ashamed of her laziness.' Brand, whose explanation Hone in his Every-Day Book has adopted, renders 'hackin' by 'the great sausage;' and Nares tells us, that the word means 'a large sort of sausage, being a part of the cheer provided for Christmas festivities,'--deriving the word from _hack_, to cut or chop. Agreeing in this derivation, we do not admit Nares's explanation. 'Hackin,' literally taken, is mince-meat of any kind; but Christmas mince-meat, everybody knows, means a composition of meat and suet (hacked small) seasoned with fruit and spices. And from the passage above quoted, that 'the hackin must be boiled, i. e., boiling, by daybreak,' it is obvious the worthy archdeacon who, as well as Brand and Hone, has explained it as a great sausage, did not see that 'hackin' is neither more nor less than the old name for the national English dish of plum pudding.