Punch (29.1855)

BROTHER JONATHAN,—Your friend Punch makes you the very handsome Christmas offering of this,
his Twenty-ninth Volume. The best of friends will now and then have little wrinkles of temper; but
then a little calm consideration, a little tolerance towards one another, smoothes them out, and all is clear again.
So, dear Jonathan, let it be with you and me, even with Jonathan and Punch, as the two representatives of
the great Saxon family; between whom let there be nothing rougher than Atlantic billows.

Long before George Washington spun his peg-top, your friend Punch was a bit of living, stirring
wood—the real lignum vita,—in hearty England. Genealogists, with a small envy, have dated the family of
Punch no later than the time of Queen Anne. I have, I hope, a very proper contempt of this heraldic
disparagement. I believe the family tree to have sprung from an acorn dropt, and mysteriously picked up, and
as secretly dropt again in more congenial soil, from an oak of the Druids. Be this as it may, the deeds of
Punch have become his ancestors : and how many of your forefathers have laughed and meditated, and given
their coppers, small but willing oblations at the shrine, that is, stage, of Punch. You and he, Jonathan, both
speak a common language. When Punch cries out in the streets, does not Jonathan regard him ?

I am most happy to find, dear friend, that Christmas will close in about us, and find us once more
neart-whole and amicable. Pray give a hint—and one of the strongest—to President Pierce to put a muzzle
now and then upon his Attorney-General. Here has that amiable lawyer been doing his best to blow red coals
between England and the States, and that too at a time when the heartiest good wishes and best sympathies
of Jonathan ought to attend upon his relations. Ought, say I? Why, they do. This is plain enough : for
hardly has the lawyer aforesaid blown-off half his steam of verbiage, than the strong common sense, the good
kindly heart of America spoke out, and warmed up, and declared that the very thought of another quarrel with
England was a monstrous folly and a huger crime. And so Mr, Attorney-General nationally snubbed, became
suddenlv as quiet and as dumb as a defunct raven.

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