CHRISTMAS BOXES FOR BEAUTY.
A novel kind of Christmas Box is suggested by a legend which Mr. Punch lately beheld in the window of a hair-dresser's shop—"Presents for Christmas." It was posted in the midst of a variety of Chignons. A box containing a quantity of false hair is the Christmas-Box thereby presented to the imagination of the passer-by. But who would offer it to a young lady? Such a present is equivalent to the gift of a wig. It is a Christmas-Box or a New Year's Gift of a class in which may be included several other articles of a similar description, but more useful, and much more ornamental. For instance, you might give a friend in need, personal and pecuniary, a Christmas-Box in the shape of a set of artificial teeth, or the "Guinea Jaw" of our friend the Dentist, or a glass eye, or a gutta-percha nose, or a wooden leg.
Some of the "Presents for Christmas" above referred to were Chignons which looked like horses' tails. Others of the Chignons for Christmas-Boxes exhibited a remarkable resemblance to the tail of a comet, from which eccentric luminary the idea of those prodigious top-knots may possibly have been borrowed. Astronomy, along with Geography and the Use of the Globes, has long formed a branch of female education. An intelligent girl, fresh from boarding-school, if requested to describe the Coma Berenices might, or might not inform her questioner that it was a celestial Chignon.
"Our Wig!"
Among the names of possible candidates for the Speakership was that of Mr. Samuel Whitbread, Member for Bedford. He would be an excellent Speaker, but, as matter of humanity, Punch must have opposed this selection. Imagine a triumph of the Anti-Liquor League, imagine the success of a Bill for putting down Porter, and imagine a grandson of Whitbread having to say "That this Bill do pass!"
MY HEALTH.
ome we return from otter-hunting. Tired, but expecting a "Nicht wi' Ruddock." He is to be at dinner, and a few very intimates are coming in the evening. The few "very intimates" have no distance to drive—merely a matter of eight miles or so.