even
changing the Christian name of the young ladies who always drown
themselves when parliament is up, we shall take the matter into our own
hands, and write a "Chapter of Accidents" that will drive these poor
pretenders to the secrets of hemp and rats-bane fairly out of the
field.--Ibid.

* * * * *

AWKWARDNESS.

Man is naturally the most awkward animal that inhales the breath of
life. There is nothing, however simple, which he can perform with the
smallest approach to gracefulness or ease. If he walks,--he hobbles, or
jumps, or limps, or trots, or sidles, or creeps--but creeping, sidling,
limping, hobbling, and jumping, are by no means walking. If he sits,--he
fidgets, twists his legs under his chair, throws his arm over the back
of it, and puts himself into a perspiration, by trying to be at ease. It
is the same in the more complicated operations of life. Behold that
individual on a horse! See with what persevering alacrity he hobbles up
and down from the croupe to the pommel, while his horse goes quietly at
an amble of from four to five miles in the hour. See how his knees,
flying like a weaver's shuttle, from one extremity of the saddle to
another, destroy, in a pleasure-ride from Edinburgh to Roslin, the good,
gray kerseymeres, which were glittering a day or two ago in Scaife and
Willis's shop. The horse begins to gallop--Bless our soul! the gentleman
will decidedly roll off. The reins were never intended to be pulled like
a peal of Bob Majors; your head, my friend ought to be on your own
shoulders, and not poking out between your charger's ears; and your
horse ought to use _its_ exertions to move on, and not you. It is a very
cold day, you have cantered your two miles, and now you are wiping your
brows, as if you had run the distance in half the time on foot.

People think it a mighty easy thing to roll along in a carriage. Step
into this noddy. That creature in the corner is evidently in a state of
such nervous excitement that his body is as immovable as if he had
breakfasted on the kitchen poker; every jolt of the vehicle must give
him a shake like a battering-ram; do you call this coming in to give
yourself a rest? Poor man, your ribs will ache for this for a month to
come! But the other gentleman opposite: see how flexible he has rendered
his body. Every time my venerable friend on the coach-box extends his
twig with a few yards of twine at the end of it, which he denom