To get into a passion in the street is sometimes peculiarly awkward. It makes you feel like a bottle of soda-water that wants to go off and can't. Some people ought to have their hats wired down, cork-fashion. Walking with an irascible friend the other day--I am fond of such companions, and can boast a great variety of them--he worked himself into as pretty a specimen of fury as I have lately seen; but what was to be done? There was nothing to cause it, and there was no relief to be had. Apple-stalls upset are but vulgar exploits; me, he could not strangle in the open street; there was no temptation to smash a lamp in the broad daylight, however agreeable and comforting at night; there was no loitering schoolboy in the way, to be kicked "for _always_ tieing that shoe;" yet, "as fires imprisoned fiercest burn," out the blaze must burst, the volcano was not to be smothered up. Accordingly, just as we reached the open window of a butcher's shop, on the board of which a lad in blue sleeves, and black, glossy, curling hair, sat intently reading the "Sorrows of Werter," my passionate friend stopped. Whether he meant to snatch, a weapon, à la Virginius, was doubtful. I thought at least he would have snatched the grease-marked volume out of the hands of the sentimental butcher-boy, and trampled it under-foot; when instead, off he darted across the wide street, I following--rushed up to a house opposite, seized the large knocker, and plied it with the combined force of forty footmen, or a legion of penny-postmen rolled into one! I stood, looking on, amazed, while he knocked and knocked, without one moment's cessation, until the door was torn open, and the knocker dropped from his fingers. The servant-maid looked aghast, yet the accustomed spirit of inquiry, Who was he? What _did_ he want? was uppermost in her face. "Oh!" said my now subdued companion, "Oh! ah!-a-I'm sorry to have troubled you! I-a-I don't want anybody--it's all right--thank you--I'm better now!" Thus saying he quietly took my arm, and we sauntered off. I never saw a fellow in a more charming flow of spirits than his were throughout the rest of that day. [Illustration]