head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner.  If I have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don’t pass the gate.  I recognize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages.  I entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork yesterday at dinner; and when Bob’s aunt came to tea in the evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely, and said—­

     “First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,
     Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.

Chorus of children: 

     Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back!

     Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw;
     Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;
     Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,
     Then I saw the monkeys—­mercy, how unpleasantly they—­smelt!”

There.  No one can beat that piece of wit, can he, Bob?  And so it is all over; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us, hadn’t we?  Present my respects to the doctor; and I hope, my boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year.

ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR

On the doorpost of the house of a friend of mine, a few inches above the lock, is a little chalk-mark which some sportive boy in passing has probably scratched on the pillar.  The door-steps, the lock, handle, and so forth, are kept decently enough; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some three inches out of the housemaid’s beat, has already been on the door for more than a fortnight, and I wonder whether it will be there whilst this paper is being written, whilst it is at the printer’s, and, in fine, until the month passes over?  I wonder whether the servants in that house will read these remarks about the chalkmark?  That the Cornhill Magazine is taken in in that house I know.  In fact I have seen it there.  In fact I have read it there.  In fact I have written it there.  In a word, the house to which I allude is mine—­the “editor’s private residence,” to which, in spite of prayers, entreaties, commands, and threats, authors, and ladies especially, will send their communications, although they won’t understand that they injure their own interests by so doing; for how is a man who has his own work to do, his own exquisite inventions to form and perfect—­Maria to rescue from the unprincipled Earl—­the atrocious General to confound in his own machinations—­the angelic Dean to promote to a bishopric, and so forth—­how is a man to do all this, under a hundred interruptions, and keep his nerves and temper in that just and equable state in which they ought to be when he comes to assume the critical office?  As you will send here, ladies, I must tell you you have a much worse chance than if you forward your valuable articles to Cornhill.  Here your papers arrive, at dinner-time, we will say.