In short, what with one thing and another, walking on the street is an exceedingly disagreeable exercise. For my part, having been long connected with the city I inhabit, I am obliged to take a thousand ingenious expedients in order to get along with any degree of comfort. For one thing, I would sooner walk some miles barefooted over broken glass, than parade on the principal streets of the city at high twelve. If I were to attempt a passage that way, I might go as I have been told Oechlenschlager the Danish poet does through the streets of Copenhagen, my hat in my hand, and my body in a perpetual inclination. I have to seek all possible kinds of by-ways, through alleys profound and obscure; and when I cross a thoroughfare, it is with the same dogged straight-forward look with which a man swims across a dangerous river. When I do happen, in a moment of facility or confidence, to venture upon an open street, I have all kinds of expedients for avoiding and diminishing the pains of recognition. When you see an acquaintance approaching, you must consider the relative circumstances. Much depends on the place of meeting—much on the time—much on the crowded or empty state of the streets, and much, of course, on the degree of your intimacy with him, and the distance of time since you last met. If it be a vacant street, and not a business time of the day, and six months since you last met him, you are in for a quarter of an hour’s palaver as sure as you live, and hardly even a parting _then_, unless you can either of you manage to get up a good witticism, under cover of which you may escape. If the street be crowded, and the time a busy one, you are tolerably safe, even although it should have been a twelvemonth since you met before. In this case, you fly past with a hurried nod, which seems to say, “We are busy just now, but will have another opportunity of stopping to speak.” This is a nod of adjournment, as it were, and it is one of great satisfaction to both parties, for both argue, of course—though they don’t put that into the nod—that, as it is a twelvemonth since they last met, it may be another before they meet again. Should you meet a man in a vacant street, even in the busiest part of the day, then the former circumstance annuls the latter, and you must stand and deliver, even although you be too late for an appointment of the most interesting character. On the other hand, if you meet your man in the leisurely part of the day, in a crowded street, you get off with a nod, pretending to yourself that you are carried away by the current. Sometimes you may not take advantage of your good fortune in this last case, but so bring it about that you get into collision with your friend, and begin a conversation. In this case, even although you have only asked him how he does—not caring in the least what he has to answer—and though you positively have not another idea to interchange with him, he finds it necessary