A CURIOUS IDIOSYNCRASY.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 581, 29 April 1876, Page 3

A CURIOUS IDIOSYNCRASY.

(Pictorial World.)

It is a most curious idiosyncrasy of the upper middle class, that, although ordinarily most polite and urbane in business and society, many of its members apreir to cast off their civilisation upon entering p.iblic vehicles. It happens frequently thac a man whom any of his friends would trust implicitly, is convicted of attempting to defraud a railway company of a few pence. Trere can be no doubt that travelling brings a man out in more senses than one. If a traveller be innately cross-grained, however he may keep his temper or manners under control among his intimate friends or opponents, he will certainly break out on finding himself with strangers in a public vehicle. A Mayor of a country town, travelling in a first-class carriage, finding his boots inconvenient, divested himself thereof, placed his socked feet upon the opposite cushion, aud left his elastics upon the flooring, without apparently the slightest idea that his fellowpassengers might consider themselves annoyed by his misconduct. A lady was present. No expostulation appears to have been offered uutil the lady's departure, when a lieutenant in the army not only gave the Mayor a "bit of his mind," but on replying with coarse abuse, not altogether uniningled with commination, engaged in a tussle which ended in the Mayor being rescued half throttled. After all it seems that the Mayor took off his boots because he had the gout. The lieutenant, having been committed for trial, was acquitted on his saying that he would not have acted as he did—if he had known.