HOW A MARRIED MAN SEWS ON A BUTTON.
It is bad enough to see a bachelor sew on a button, but he is the embodiment of grace alongside a married man. Necessity has compelled experience in the case of the former, but the latter has depended upon some one else for this service, and fortunately for the sake of society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to the needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right hand, or runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it is then the man clutches the needle around the neck, and, forgetting to tie a knot on the thread, commences to put on the button.
It is always in the morning, and from five to twenty minutes after this he is expected to be down street. He lays the button on exactly the site of its predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, and carefully draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of it sticking up for leeway. He says to himself, “Well, if women don’t have the easiest time I ever see.”
Then he comes back the other way and gets the needle through the cloth easy enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but, in spite of a great deal of patient jabbing, the needle point persists in bucking against the solid parts of the button, and finally, when he loses patience, his fingers catch the thread, and that three inches he has left to hold the button slips through the eye in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across the floor. He picks it up without a single remark, out of respect for his children, and makes another attempt to fasten it.
This time, when coming back with the needle, he keeps both the thread and button from slipping, by covering them with his thumb; and it is out of regard for that part of him that he feels around for the eye in a very careful and judicious manner, but eventually losing his philosophy as the search becomes more and more hopeless, he falls to jabbing about in a loose and savage manner, and it is just then the needle finds the opening and comes up the button and part way through his thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can guard against. Then he lays down the things with a few familiar quotations, and presses the injured hand between his knees, and then holds it under the other arm, and finally jams it into his mouth, and all the while he prances and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has never been anything like it since the world was created, and howls, and whistles, and moans and sobs. After a while he calms down and puts on his pants and fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his business a changed man.
J. M. Bailey.
