SEWING ON BUTTONS.

Evening Star, Issue 3435, 24 February 1874, Page 3

SEWING ON BUTTONS.

The facetious editor of the ‘Danburv News,’ whose funny sayings are so widely copied, thus describes the male process of sewing on buttons It is bad enough to see a bache’or 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 always depended on some one else for the service, and, fortunately for the sake of society, it is rarely that he is obliged to resort to the needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right band, or runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it is then that the man clutches the needle round the neck, forgetting to tie a knot in the thread, and commences to put on on the button. It is always in the morning, and from five to twenty minutes after he is expected to be down the street. He lays the button exactly on the site of its predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, and draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of it sticking up for lee way. He says to himself “ Well, if women don’t have the easiest time, I see.” Then he comes back the other way and gets the needle through the cloth well enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but in spite of a great deal of jabking, the needle point persists in bucking against the solid parts of that button, and, finally, when he loses patience, his fingers catch the thread, and that three inches he had left to hold the button slips through the eye in a twinkling : 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. This time when coming back with the needle be keeps both the thread and the 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 evidently 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 through the button and part way through his thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can guard against. Then he lays down the things, and presses the injured hand between his kness, and then holds it under his arms, finally into his mouth, and all the while he prances about on the floor and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has never been anything like it since the world was created, and he 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 business a changed man.