Harper’s Weekly – December 25, 1886
Appropriately, Nast’s last Christmas cartoon for Harper’s Weekly appeared on its cover, post-dated at the start of his final week at the publication in 1886.
Once more, he played off ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, but he now featured the sleeping mice in their beds and their house. Among Nast’s imaginative fantasies were a miniature telephone on the wall behind Papa Mouse’s fashionable iron bed, as well as a watch set at midnight and a bottle of croup medicine on the night table beside it. (Nast probably used that medicine frequently for his chronic throat problems.)