A Xmas card is a pleasant memento of a season of good will and kindly sentiment. It is a reminiscence of Xmas time. With Xmas we associate happy gatherings of friends, wintry skies without and cheerful hearths within, ice and snow to be kept in subjugation by warmth of disposition and genial affection. The Xmas cards ought to embody such traits, physical and mental.

An interesting additional bit of information is buried in Bollard’s Preface, to wit: /… [P]ronunciations were actually “proof[-]listened.” Through facilities made available by AT&T Bell Laboratories of Murray Hill, New Jersey, all pronunciations were actually heard using speech-synthesis technology.

Semiramis was the first woman to invent eunuchs and women have had sympathy for them ever since; […] and women can tell them what they can't tell other men. And Ivor, suddenly cheered by laughing at his absurd platitudes, and finding himself by the door, was going from the room.

He said he wasn't paying good money for girlie hair — that's what he called it anytime we wanted to go into town to have a real haircut.