to disengage himself from the throng in order to reply. You now get upon the curb-stone, or upon the causeway, where, of course, you have no more advantage from the crowded state of the street than a fish has of a river after it has been thrown upon the bank. You are now in the same predicament as if you had met your friend in the same cool part of the day _in a perfectly empty street_, and therefore, when he has answered your precious question as to his health, you are as fairly in for a quarter of an hour of wretched, bald, wishy-washy conversation about all kinds of nothings that you don’t care one farthing about, as ever you were in your life. The only thing that can now save you is either a joke to laugh yourselves asunder upon, a crowd raised at a distant part of the street by some such matter as a child ridden over by a coach, or else, what is not a bad means of separation, though sometimes dangerous, you cut off one grievous encumbrance by taking on another; that is, you see another friend coming up your way, and, pretending you have something to say to him, shake off the old love and take on with the new: in which case it is not improbable that you spend longer time at the end of the street with this last individual than you might have had to spend with the former one if you had continued with him, and only given the other man a passing nod; but, of course, that is all the fortune of war, and, having done what seemed best under the circumstances, you must rather blame fate than your own imprudence. Consider well, however, in such a case, whether you are likely to get soonest off with the new or the old love; for if you take on with a bore of ten minutes’ power, in order to get off with one of only five, merely because he is going your way, and promises no interruption in the first instance, you may only fall into Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis.