It was at this moment that I remembered my boots. Yes, I would certainly
put on my boots. There was nothing like putting on one's boots for helping
one to make up one's mind. The act of stooping changed the current of the
blood. You saw things in a new light--like the man who looked between his
legs at Bolton Abbey, and cried to his friend: "Oh, look this way; it's
extraordinary what a fresh view you get." So I fetched my boots and sat
down to put them on.

The thing worked like a charm. For in my preoccupied condition I picked up
my right boot first. Then mechanically I put it down and seized the left
boot. "Now why," said I, "did I do that?" And then the fact flashed on me
that all my life I had been putting on my left boot first. If you had asked
me five minutes before which boot I put on first, I should have said that
there was no first about it; yet now I found I was in the grip of a habit
so fixed that the attempt to put on my right boot first affected me like
the scraping of a harsh pencil on a slate. The thing couldn't be done. The
whole rhythm of habit would be put out of joint. I became interested. How,
I wondered, do I put on my jacket? I rose, took it off, found that my right
arm slipped automatically into its sleeve, tried the reverse process,
discovered that it was as difficult as an unfamiliar gymnastic operation.
Why, said I, I am a mere bundle of little habits of which I am unconscious.
This thing must be looked into. And then came into my mind that fascinating
book of Samuel Butler's on _Life and Habit_. Yes, certainly, here was a
subject that would "go." I dismissed all the importunate beggars who had
been clamouring in my mind, took out a pencil, seized a writing pad, and
sat down to write on "The Force of Habit."

And here I am. I have got to the end of my article without reaching my
subject. I have looked up and down the street so long that it is time to go