How many anxious calculations have to be made, what knitting of smooth brows, what hasty arithmetic on stray scraps of paper, what self-denial in personal matters to increase the little store, and then, when the materials are bought, what secret work is carried on behind father’s chair, should he happen to be awake, and in this and that out-of-the-way nook of the house, so that the all-important, and generally extremely apparent, secret is not divulged until the Christmas or New Year’s morning! All honour to this secrecy, this planning and patient work! It is the true spirit of present-giving; and let not any of our readers despise it as childish; rather let them remember that that which costs no time, no thought, no self-sacrifice is but of little value in the eyes of affection, and pleases only where the gift is valued for itself, and not for the giver. The girl who can walk into a shop and select the first handsome article in it for mamma, and pay for it from an amply-supplied purse, neither awakens in herself or her mother the same holy feelings that are excited when baby works an impossible kettle-holder “all by herself,” and which she “bided” out of the pennies given her for sweeties. Admiring and sympathising as we do with girls who are generous-minded and do not count labour and time when anxious to please, we have brought together in this paper, with the idea of helping them, several useful and pretty articles that can be made without any great expense. For a small present, costing at the utmost one shilling, the fashionable little “hold-all bags” are good. These bags are four in number, and are connected together only at the top; they are filled with odds and ends, such as buttons and silks, until they stand upright and all of a row, and they find a conspicuous place among drawing-room nick-nacks.