PICK-ME-UP PEPPER.—The Proprietors beg to inform their Friends and Patrons that they can supply this highly combustible and explosive compound in felt safety cases, carefully packed at their bomb-proof establishment in Barking Marshes, at the usual retail prices, viz., 1s. 1-1/2d., 2s. 9d., 11s., 21s., and 31s. 6d., &c, &c.
SHADOWS FROM MISTLETOE AND HOLLY.
Dear Mr. Punch,—I venture to address you on a subject that I feel sure will enlist your kind attention and sympathy. How am I to get through Yule Tide? Ought I to give up the dispatch of "cards," or ought I to send them to all my relatives, friends, and acquaintances? If I drop the custom, people who like me will think I am outting them, and persons with whom I am less popular will imagine that economy, not to say meanness, is the cause of my ceasing to trouble the Post Office. Suppose that I "hang the expense," and do send the cards. Well, I am in this position; it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to get a suitable greeting to all those who receive my annual benediction. If I have "Wishing you and yours every happiness," with my appended name and address lithographed, the greeting seems cold, and even inappropriate, if addressed to, say, a favourite Maiden Aunt; and unduly familiar if forwarded to the acquaintance I saw for the first time in my life the day before yesterday. Then if I trust to the ordinary Christmas Cards of commerce, I am often at a loss to select an appropriate recipient for a nestful of owls, or the picture of a Clown touching up an elderly gentleman of highly respectable appearance with a red-hot poker! If I get a representation of flowers, the chances are ten to one that the accompanying lines are of a compromising character. It is obviously cruel to send to a recently-widowed Uncle some verses about "Darby and Joan," and my Mother-in-law is not likely to feel complimented if I forward to her a poetically expressed suggestion that there is no pleasanter place than her own home—away, of course, from her Son-in-law! And yet these are the problems that meet the would-be Yule Tide card distributer at every turn! I remain, my dear Mr. Punch, yours sincerely,
ONE WHO WISHES TO AVOID A ROW.
P.S.—If this arrives late, thank the cards that have overtaxed the postal arrangements.
The United Service Diary for 1891.
