HOW MEN SEW.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 799, 13 January 1877, Page 3

HOW MEN SEW.

(Daubury News.') It is only when driven to it that the average man will attempt to sew. When all the women folks are away in the country during the summer, is f|the time that he is hardest pushed. His greatest trouble then is buttons. A feeling of utter desolation and fell despair comes surging up over his soul as he sees them, one by one, like summer roses, f;idc away and pass into the forgotten past Wearily and solemnly he replaces them with big pins, or bits of string secured in holes jabbed by the ever-ready jaeknife, and goes moping about among happier people with a feelmg of insecurity and uneasiness preying upon his mind. It is only until he has been scratched with pins, or been in imminent danger of losing off some of his clothes in public that he rouses himself. _ Then he goes to work sewing on buttons like mad. He just plunges into it and makes a business and , an enthusiasm of it. He isn't particular about the buttons so that they're buttons. Anything near the size of the button-hole will do —anything that will go in ami stay. The style of the workmanship amounts to simply nothing with him ; it is thoroughness that he is after, fie wants mainly to be assured that the button will stay on—not one year, but a thousand—and he will satisfy himself on thiu point, too, abundantly, even if he has to test his work by prying on it with a crowbar. If he isn't jnat sure that his thread is Btrong enough for the situation he will go to any excess to put his doubts at rest even to the use of. bed-cord, improvising a needle therefor out of a clothes-prop and driving it through with an axe. Then he knows he has a job that he can rely upon for all time to come. This thorough kind of man is the making of any community in which he resides, as he may always be depended upon. There are a class of men who are especially hard on suspender buttons. Nothing can withstand the way in which they reach and strain and stoop aroand and soap them off, either breaking them in two or jerking them out by the roots. Whenever this sort of man sneezes there is sure to be trouble, as then the buttons come off in ■'lowers. He is a great party around at j Sabbath-school picnics, where he makes [himself valuable by jumping and climbing I about and putting up swings, always with a

mortifying effect; for he invariably comes dowa out of the tree supporting bis trousers as best he can, and indulging in the biggest kind of doubt as to his ability to go round much that way without compromising his dignity. A real wise man in this situation won't try ; but, retiring in au ex.:ess of rage, soon reappears with his waistband roughly nailed full of small cake tins, and his suspenders proudly doing duty over them. A man will get along fairly with buttons, but there are other things that bother him severely. He will sometimes attempt darning, but with results something like a coarse coal sieve. He will occasionally attempt a patch and thereby give an idea that he has once been a boiler member or a roofer. Knit underwear he will occasionally essay to repair, and thereafter ruin his piece of mind by going around in the severe grip of the places he has drawn together with strong black linen thread. He will do all this, and more with an easy confidence and a calm self-reliance truly beautiful to behold; but it is not until he attempts to run a sewing machine that he reaUzes how weak and mortal he is. Then the angels bow their heads and weep. It is not often that he plunges into such a black and desperate enterprise; but occasionally, when left alone by himself, he will do it. His wife has gone away leaving the sewing machine locked; and he regards it with a benigu smile as in the absence of the key he pries the cover off with a hatchet. It is very easy work for him to thread it up wrong with anything handy, and it is easier still for him to put whatever he wants to sew into the machine, and clear his throat with a reassuring ' hem ?' of confidence; but when, at the first clip, the polished needle jabs him in the third finger of the right hand and snaps off just underneath the nail, he comes to a realising sense of the difficulties in the case, and gets up and talks about it and swings his hand in the air, and squeezes it between his knees, and put it on top of his head, and roars and roars, and darts out after a doctor, and for days thereafter may be seen wearily lugging around a pound or more of poultice, and humbly asserting that it's a felon.