BARBER COX, AND THE CUTTING OF HIS COMB. JANUARY.—THE ANNOUNCEMENT. On the 1st of January, 1838, I was the master of a lovely shop in the neighbourhood of Oxford market; of a wife, Mrs. Cox; of a business, both in the shaving and cutting line, established three-and-thirty years; of a girl and boy respectively of the ages of eighteen and thirteen; of a three-windowed front, both to my first and second pair; of a young foreman, my present partner, Mr. Orlando Crump; and of that celebrated mixture for the human hair, invented by my late uncle, and called Cox's Bohemian Balsam of Tokay, sold in pots at two-and-three, and three-and-nine; the balsam, the lodgings, and the old-established cutting and shaving business, brought me in a pretty genteel income. I had had my girl, Jemimarann, at Hackney, to school; my dear boy, Tuggeridge, plaited hair already beautifully; my wife at the counter (behind the tray of patent soaps, &c.) cut as handsome a figure as possible; and it was my hope that Orlando and my girl, who were mighty soft upon one another, would, one day, be joined together in Hyming: and, conjointly with my son Tug, carry on the business of hairdressers, when their father was either dead or a gentleman; for a gentleman me and Mrs. C. determined I should be. Jemima was, you see, a lady herself, and of very high connexions: though her own family had met with crosses, and was rather low. Mr. Tuggeridge, her father, kept the famous tripe-shop, near the Pigtail and Sparrow, in the Whitechapel Road, from which place I married her; being myself very fond of the article, and especially when she served it to me—the dear thing! Jemima's father was not successful in business: and I married her, I am proud to confess it, without a shilling. I had my hands, my house, and my Bohemian balsam to support her!—and we had hopes from her uncle, a mighty rich East India merchant, who, having left this country sixty years ago, had arrived to be the head of a great house in India, and was worth millions, we were told.