I confess to being nervous. I don’t admire the individual who places a foot upon the rounds of the chair on which I am sitting; or beats a prolonged tattoo with his fingers on the table; or stands with his hands on a creaking door, moving it backward and forward, while he performs an interminable leave-taking; or spins napkin-rings, while he waits for the dessert; or tips his chair back on its hind legs, in the warmth of debate; or tells jokes as old as Noah’s ark; or levels volleys of puns at me when I am not in the laughing mood.

Yes, I’m nervous. I would rather not hear a dog bark more than half the night. The scissors-grinder’s eternal bell-tinkle, and the soap-fat man’s long-drawn whoop, send me out of my chair like a pop-gun. I break down under the best minister, after “forty-ninthly;” and am prepared to scream at any minute after every seat in a street car is filled, and every body is holding somebody in their laps; and somebody is treading on every body’s toes in the aisle; and every door and window is shut; and onions and musk, and tobacco and jockey-club, and whisky, and patchouli are mingling their sweets; and the unconscionable conductor continues to beckon to misguided females upon the sidewalk, with whole families of babies (every one of whom is sucking oranges or sugar-candy), to crowd in, and add the last drop of agony to my brimming cup.

Yes, I think I may say I am nervous. I prefer, when the windows of an omnibus are open, and the wind “sets that way,” that the driver should not ex-spit-orate any oftener than is necessary. If the skirt of my dress must be torn from my belt by hasty feet upon the sidewalk, I prefer it to be done by a man’s boot rather than a woman’s un-apologizing slipper; if the fringe of my mantle is foreordained “to catch,” the gods grant it may be in a surtout button rather than on a feminine watch-chain. If women shopkeepers were less lavish of cross looks, and crossed sixpences, I might have more faith in the predicted “millennium.” I don’t wish the Irish woman any harm who tortures me by grinding on her accordeon in the cars, but, if I thought she had settled her little reckoning with the priest, I should be happy to peruse her obituary. I had rather not exchange a pleasant parlor circle for the company of a huge bundle of “proof, to be called for by seven o’clock the next morning;” and I had rather not have the pianos, in five different houses near, each playing different tunes while I am revising it. I don’t wish to interfere with infant boys who are fond of bonfires, but if they could make them of something beside dried leaves, it would be a saving to my bronchial apparatus. If people who address me would spell “Fanny” with two ns, I should be more likely to answer their letters. If the little cherub, in jacket and trowsers, who blows the organ of a Sunday, would stand behind a screen, it would materially assist my devotions. If all the men in New York had as handsome a beard as the editor of the ——, I would not object to see them h—air ’em. I should rather the New Yorker would not say that such and such a paragraph would “go all over,” instead of “everywhere.” I should rather the Connecticuter, when he does not comprehend me, would not startle me out of my chair with a sharp Which? I should rather the Yankee would not say “he was going to wash him,” or speak of the “back side of the church.” And, lastly, if all the people who are born with seven fingers on one hand, or feet minus toes, or two noses, would not select me in the street to inspect their monstrosities, my epitaph might possibly be deferred a while longer.