HE THOUGHT HE COULD DO IT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 323, 24 November 1879, Page 2

HE THOUGHT HE COULD DO IT.

He had never tried it before, but lie was naturally a self-reliant man, and felt confident of his ability to do it. Moreover, his wife had gone into the country, Therefore, carefully selecting from that lady's work-basket the thickest needle and stoutest thread (as is the God-given instinct of his sex), he resolutely set himself to the task. Spitting upon his hVers, he carefully rolled the end into a point, and then, closing one of his own optics, he attempted to jab out the needle's solitary eye. But the thread either passed by one side or the other of the needle, or humped itself against the glittering steel, and refused to be persuaded. However, while he reflected upon the difficulty which must attend a rich man's entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, the thread suddenly bolted through the eye to the extent of an inch, and, feiring 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 trouser one, but he liked the dimensions of its holes, and it was only going into the back of his shirt, anyhow. As he passed the needle gently upwards through the linen, he felt a mingled pity and disdain for men who bungled over such easy jobs; and as he let the button gracefully glide down the thread to its appointed place, he vowed within himself that if ever he married a second time it should be for some nobler reason than a dread of 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 of the needle did not enter to the bone, but 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 ur through the hole nearest the other. 01 course he would. But the needle had an independent way suiting itself as to holes, and it chose the one where the thumb was. The remarks which followed would have been quite out of place at a prayer meeting. Then the needle got sulky. It didn't care about holes, anyhow, if it was going to be sworn at for finding them, and the button might have been an unperforated disc for all the apertures it could thenceforward be made to discover, without infinite poking and prodding. It always came through when it was° least expected, and never where it was wanted. Still he persevered, and it was not until he finally discovered that ho had stitched over the edge of the button and had sewn it on the wrong side of the shirt that he utterly broke down.-San Francisco News Letter,