that, in glancing over the pages of Victor Hugo's greatest work, I
chanced upon the following:--"Every one will have noticed with what
skill a coin let fall upon the ground runs to hide itself, and what art
it has in rendering itself invisible; there are thoughts which play us
the same trick," etc., etc.

The similar tendency of pins and needles is universally understood and
execrated,--their base secretiveness when searched for, and their
incensing intrusion when one is off guard.

I know a man whose sense of their malignity is so keen, that, whenever
he catches a gleam of their treacherous lustre on the carpet, he
instantly draws his two and a quarter yards of length into the smallest
possible compass, and shrieks until the domestic police come to the
rescue, and apprehend the sharp little villains. Do not laugh at this.
Years ago he lost his choicest friend by the stab of just such a little
dastard lying in ambush.

So also every wielder of the needle is familiar with the propensity of
the several parts of a garment in the process of manufacture to turn
themselves wrong side out, and down side up; and the same viciousness
cleaves like leprosy to the completed garment so long as a thread
remains.

My blood still tingles with a horrible memory illustrative of this
truth.

Dressing hurriedly and in darkness for a concert one evening, I appealed
to the Dominie, as we passed under the hall-lamp, for a
toilet-inspection.

"How do I look, father?"

After a sweeping glance came the candid statement,--

"Beau-tifully!"

Oh, the blessed glamour which invests a child whose father views her
"with a critic's eye"!

"Yes, _of course_; but look carefully, please; how is my dress?"

Another examination of apparently severest scrutiny.

"All right, dear! That's the new cloak, is it? Never saw you look
better. Come, we shall be late."

Confidingly I went to the hall; confidingly I entered; since the
concert-room was crowded with rapt listeners to the Fifth Symphony, I,
gingerly, but still confidingly, followed the author of my days, and the
critic of my toilet, to the very uppermost seat, which I entered, barely
nodding to my finically fastidious friend, Guy Livingston, who was
seated near us with a stylish-looking stranger, who bent eyebrows and
glass upon me superciliously.

Seated, the Dominie was at once lifted into the midst of the massive
harmonies of the Adagio; I lingered outside a moment, in order to settle