There is a habit peculiar to many walkers, which Punch, some years ago,
touched upon satirically, but which seems to have survived the jester's
ridicule. It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to whom
we have nothing whatever to communicate, but whom we embarrass for no
other purpose than simply to show our friendship. Jones meets his friend
Smith, whom he has met in nearly the same locality but a few hours
before. During that interval, it is highly probable that no event of
any importance to Smith, nor indeed to Jones, which by a friendly
construction Jones could imagine Smith to be interested in, has
occurred, or is likely to occur. Yet both gentlemen stop and shake hands
earnestly. "Well, how goes it?" remarks Smith with a vague hope that
something may have happened. "So so," replies the eloquent Jones,
feeling intuitively the deep vacuity of his friend answering to his
own. A pause ensues, in which both gentlemen regard each other with an
imbecile smile and a fervent pressure of the hand. Smith draws a long
breath and looks up the street; Jones sighs heavily and gazes down
the street. Another pause, in which both gentlemen disengage their
respective hands and glance anxiously around for some conventional
avenue of escape. Finally, Smith (with a sudden assumption of having
forgotten an important engagement) ejaculates, "Well, I must be off"--a
remark instantly echoed by the voluble Jones, and these gentlemen
separate, only to repeat their miserable formula the next day. In the
above example I have compassionately shortened the usual leave-taking,
which, in skilful hands, may be protracted to a length which I shudder
to recall. I have sometimes, when an active participant in these
atrocious transactions, lingered in the hope of saying something natural
to my friend (feeling that he, too, was groping in the mazy labyrinths
of his mind for a like expression), until I have felt that we ought to
have been separated by a policeman. It is astonishing how far the most