Miscellany.

Dunstan Times, Issue 990, 8 April 1881, Page 3

Miscellany.

STITCHING ON A BUTTON. He had never tried it before, but he was naturally a solf-rejiaut man, and felt confident of his ability to do it. Moreover, his wife had gone to the country. Therefore, carefully selecting from that lady’s workbasket the thickest needle and stoutest thread, he resolutely set himself to the task. Spitting upon his fingers, ho carefully rolled the end of the thread into a point, and then, closing one of Lis own optics, he attempted to fill up the needle’s solitary eye ; but the thread either passed by one side or the other of the needle, or worked itself against the glittering steel, and refused to be persuaded. However, the thread suddenly bolted through the eye to the extent of an inch, and, fearing to lose this advantage, he quickly drew the ends together, and united them with a knot about the size of a buckshot. The button was a trousers one, and it was only going on the back of his shirt, anyhow, Ashe passed the needle gently upward through the linen, he felt a mingled pity and disdain for men bungling over such easy jobs; and, as he let the button gracefully glide down the thread to its appointed place, he said to himself that if ho ever married a second time it should be for some nobler reason than a dread ot sewing on his own buttons. The first downward thrust had the same happy result, and holding the button down firmly with his thumb, he came up again with all that confidence which uniform success inspires. Perhaps the point o( the needle did not enter to the bone, hut it seemed to him that it did, and his comment upon the circumstance was emphatic. But he was very ingenious, and next time he would hold the button by one edge, and come up the hole nearest the other. Of course he would. But the needle bad an independent way of suiting itself as to holes, and it chose the one where the thumb was. Then the needle got sulky. It didn’t care about boles, anyhow, if it was going to be abused for finding them, and the button might have been an unperforated disc for all the apertures which that needle could henceforward be made to discover, without infinite poking and prodding. It always came through when it was least expected, and never when it was wanted. Still he persevered, and it was not un+il he finally discovered that be had stitched over the edge of the button and had sewed it on the wrong side of the shirt that he utterly broke down.—Chicago Arrow,