CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
CHRISTMAS-TIME.
A CAST OF THE NET.
FEATS OF ENDURANCE.
A DIFFICULT QUESTION.
IS THE TELEPHONE A PRACTICAL SUCCESS?
SINGING MICE.
USING UP WASTE SUBSTANCES.
LET BYGONES BE BYGONES.
| No. 730. | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1877. | Price 1½d. |
CHRISTMAS-TIME.
'So many men so many minds' has been a proverblong before our days, and will be to the endof time and human history; and uniformity ofsentiment is the one thing which men need neverhope to attain.
Christmas-time is one of these battle-fields offeeling. To some it is just the consecration ofso many circumstances of torture; to others themeeting-point of so many facts of pleasure. Fromthe conventional greeting to the orthodox dinner—fromthe 'seasonable gifts' that are more obligatorythan voluntary, to the toast that heralds thepunch, and the dreams that follow on that lastglass—all is so much pain to the flesh and wearinessto the spirit; and they wonder how any onecan find it otherwise. What is there in Christmas-timeto make it pleasurable? they say. Thegathering together of the family? A lot of roughboys home from school, who spoil the furnitureand tease the dogs, lame the horses and ravagethe garden, make the servants cross, the girlsrude, and the younger children insubordinate; whoupset all the order of the house, destroy its comfortlike its quiet, and to whose safe return todiscipline and your own restoration to tranquillityyou look forward with impatient longingfrom the first hour of their arrival to the lastof their stay? Or the advent of your marrieddaughter with her two spoilt babies, who cry ifthey are looked at and want everything that theysee, and that very objectionable young man herhusband, with his ultra opinions and passion forargument, whom she would marry in spite of allthat you could say, but to whom you can scarcelyforce yourself to be decently civil, not to speak ofcordial, and whose presence is a perpetual blisterwhile it lasts? Is this the family gathering aboutwhich you are expected to gush?—this with theaddition of your son's fine-lady wife who snubs hismother and sisters with as little breeding asreserve, finds nothing at your table that she caneat, lives with her smelling-bottle to her nose andpropped up with cushions on the sofa, and givesyou to understand that she considers herselfhumiliated by her association with y