My financial career -- Lord Oxhead's secret -- Boarding-house geometry -- The awful fate of Melpomenus Jones -- A Christmas letter -- How to make a million dollars -- How to live to be 200 -- How to avoid getting married -- How to be a doctor -- The new food -- A new pathology -- The poet answered -- The force of statistics -- Men who have shaved me -- Getting the thread of it -- Telling his faults -- Winter pastimes -- Number fifty-six -- Aristocratic education -- The conjurer's revenge -- Hints to travellers -- A manual of education -- Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas -- The life of John Smith -- On collecting things -- Society chit-chat -- Insurance up to-date -- Borrowing a match -- A lesson in fiction -- Helping the Armenians -- A study in still life: the country hotel -- An experiment with Policeman Hogan -- The passing of the poet -- Self-made men -- A model dialogue -- Bach to the bush -- Reflections on riding -- Saloonio -- Half-hours with the poets: Mr. Wordsworth and the cottage girl; How Tennyson killed the May queen; Old Mr. Longfellow on board the "Hesperus" -- A, B, and C.