10 SECOXD NATURE. 



and, as it were, autonriatic. Look, for instance, at 

 the smallest matters connected with the way we 

 dress ourselves, cut up our food, or perform our 

 most ordinary every-day actions. Everybody has 

 a fixed order for putting on his socks; either he 

 puts on the right foot before the left, or vice versa^ 

 and any attempt to reverse the accustomed order 

 seems to him not only awkward but almost un- 

 natural. So, again, in buttoning liis collar, he 

 either buttons the right half over the left, or the 

 left over the right ; cand, whichever he does, he 

 does it regularly, he doesn't fluctuate casually 

 from morning to morning, doing it now one way 

 and now the other. A ver}* curious difference 

 exists in this respect betwec i men's dress and 

 women's ; tailors always pu', the buttons on the 

 right side and the buttonholes on the left; while 

 dressmakers adopt the contrary course, putting 

 the buttons left and the buttonholes right. Now, 

 if a man, by any accident, has the buttons sewn 

 on any garment the unfamiliar way, he finds Inm- 

 self as awkward as a baby in the attempt to fasten 

 them ; while if a woman, on the other hand, puts 

 on a man's coat, she is struck at once by what 

 seems to her the clumsy wa^ the thing has to be 

 fastened wrong side on. In each case the habit 

 of buttoning on one side has become absolutely 

 automatic ; the muscles and nerves of the fingers 

 have adapted themselves to the accustomed move- 



