My friend G---- while riding recently on a bus top met with an experience
for which he still blushes.

There was a young woman sitting directly in front of him, and when he came
to leave, a sudden lurch threw him against her. When he recovered his
footing, which was a business of some difficulty, for the bus pitched upon
a broken pavement, what was his chagrin to find that a front button of
his coat had hooked in her back hair! Luckily G---- was not seized with a
panic. Rather, he labored cautiously--but without result. Nor could
she help in the disentanglement. Their embarrassment might have been
indefinitely prolonged--indeed, G---- was several blocks already down the
street--when he bethought him of his knife and so cut off the button. As he
pleasantly expressed it to the young woman, he would give her the choice of
the button or the coat entire.

Reader, are you inclined toward ferry boats? I cannot include those persons
who journey on them night and morning perfunctorily. These persons keep
their noses in their papers or sit snugly in the cabin. If the market is
up, they can hardly be conscious even that they are crossing a river.
Nor do I entirely blame them. If one kept shop on a breezy tip of the
Delectable Mountains with all the regions of the world laid out below,
he could not be expected to climb up for the hundredth time with a first
exhilaration, or to swing his alpenstock as though he were on a rare
holiday. If one had business across the Styx too often--although the
scenery on its banks is reputed to be unusual--he might in time sit below
and take to yawning. Father Charon might have to jog his shoulder to rouse
him when the boat came between the further piers.

But are you one of those persons who, not being under a daily compulsion,