Punch: Punch (17.1849)

J^J~R. PUNCH, the embodiment of Christmas, stands in the Christmas market-place with his Seventeenth
Volume. His leaves, like the leaves of seasonable and mysterious Mistletoe, are—Mr. Punch would
modestly observe—suggestive of many kindred delights. They tell of holyday and good humour, though of
a somewhat different sort to the dim Mistletoe age, when Punch lived with the Druids, and cut his Mistletoe
bough with knife of virgin gold; by no means the sort of knife that has since nibbed goose-quills.

Mr. Punch is warmed to the very core of his heart to feel that his Christmas Volume, like aforesaid
Mistletoe, is everywhere a bit of household bravery — an indispensable illustration of the genial time.
There is a pretty, even a touching resemblance, between the book and the plant (the latter only being
parasitical).

As the wood-dove is the especial sower of the Mistletoe, so are the quills of the wood-dove the
quills of all others with which Punch delights to set fortn his leaves.

As the Mistletoe will grow anywhere, and come out under any stress of place or circumstance, so
have the leaves of Punch been put forth in strangest, and, except to eagles, inaccessible whereabouts.

Punch always strikes to the centre of his object—so does the Mistletoe. " A number of seeds,"
says Learned Doctor Lindley, discoursing of the Mistletoe, " a number of seeds were glued to the surface