The question, "What becomes of the Christmas presents?", is one which has long vexed thinking men. Every year a tidal wave of incredibly useless junk bursts upon the metropolis, and somehow or other it is disposed of long before the first mosquito steps down to the New Jersey shore and hails the Twenty-third Street ferry. A proportion of this, no doubt, is kept working after the manner of my Smoker’s Ideal Companion; but the vast majority of Christmas presents simply disappear. My own theory is that they are sold back to the shops, whence they emerge next year in another incarnation.