• In your evening walk, being closely followed for half an hour, by a large bulldog, (without his master) who keeps up a stifled growl, with his muzzle nuzzling about your calf, as if choosing out the fleshiest bite: no bludgeon.
• In attempting to spring carelessly, with the help of one hand, over a five-barred gate, by way of showing your activity to a party of ladies behind you, (whom you affect not to have observed) blundering upon your nose on the other side.

• Seeing the boy who is next above you flogged for a recitation which you know you cannot say even half so well as he did.
• Being obliged to take a severe licking from a boy twice as big, but not half so brave as yourself; then flogged for fighting, because you at first aimed one blow, which, however, did not reach the long-armed rascal.
• Telling a story to a circle of boys who shortly interrupt you to tell you the point, having listened patiently so far for the sake of laughing at you for telling over again the same identical story that you had told them before.

• In going out to dinner (already too late), your carriage delayed by a jam of coaches which choke up the whole street, and allow you at least an hour more than you require to sharpen your wits for table talk.
        Ned Testy. You want to meat with friends-- you did meet with obstructions!
• Pushing in with an immense crowd at a narrow door, through which such another crowd is pushing out: thermometer at 95 or '6.
• Sitting with an excruciating headache to see a vile play acted by viler performers, for the eighth or tenth time, in a crowded back row, with a dull party, in August
• To finish off an evening spent in delights of this sort by coming home to a house closed to any appeal your can make.
        Ned Testy. A peal or a score of peals, on bell and knocker included.

• Entering France with the idea that you have a fair practical knowledge of French, and then finding your only difficulties to be that you cannot understand what anybody says, and that nobody can understand what you say.
• Finding that you had been addressing a charming French woman all the evening by a word which had an absurd meaning in her language, but which you mistook for her name.

• Tearing your throat to rags in abortive efforts to call back a person who has just left you, and with whom you have forgotten to touch on one of the most important subjects which you met to discuss.
• After loudly boasting of your superior skill in stirring the fire, and being requested by the lady of the house to undertake it --- suddenly extinguishing every spark,
• Making your best bow for a supposed high compliment to yourself, which, however, you are presently petrified by discovering was either not intended at all, or intended for another.

• In attempting, at a strange house, to take down a rare book from a high crowded shelf, bringing half the library upon your nose.
•   On arriving at that part of the last volume of an enchanting novel, in which the interest is wrought up to the highest pitch -- suddenly finding the remaining leaves, catastrophe and all, torn out.

• On coming down late to a hasty breakfast, finding the last drop of water in your kettle boiling away, the toast in the ashes and the cat just finishing the cream.
• Letting fall (of course on the buttered side) the piece of roll or muffin on which you had set your heart.

"I never had a dear gazelle,
Particularly long and wide,
But when it came to know me well,
and always on the buttered side!"

Ned Testy. How you do murder things, father! There were two songs, one of which was a parody on the other:

"I never had a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
and love me -- is was sure to die."

      The parody is like unto it:

"I never had a piece of bread
Particularly long and wide,
But fell upon the sanded floor
and always on the buttered side!"

• As you sit at breakfast, suddenly breaking down the back of your chair, and in a failing attempt to save yourself in your fall, kicking up the table -- with the comfort, however, of preserving the tea-urn, cups, plates, etc all of which you deliver safely into the lap of the lady of the house, who sits opposite.
• While you are swallowing a raspberry, discovering by its taste that you have been so unhappy as to occasion the death of a harmless insect.

• Squatting plump on an unsuspected and unsuspecting cat in your chair.
• Losing the keys of all your most private repositories; by which you suffer a double embarrassment: that you can not, yourself, get at what you want; and that they have, probably fallen into the hands of others, who both can and will.
• Vainly hunting, a thousand times over, in every corner, crook, and cranny of the house, for something you have lost; till, at some future period, when you have long abandoned the pursuit, the truant article appears of its own accord.

• Being on the bri-- on the bri-- on the bri-- on the br -- (sneezes)--ink of a sneeze for a quarter of an hour together; and yet, with all your gasping and sobbing, never able to compass it.
• Trying in vain to tamper with an approaching fit of the cramp, by stretching out your limbs and lying as still as a mouse.
• The interval between the dentist's confession that your tooth will be very difficult to draw, and the commencement of the attempt.

• A doctor who persists in telling you that there is nothing the matter with you, instead of giving you medicine suited to the importance you think attaches to your ailments.
  Ned Testy. Or one who always reiterates the same word, which would be equally appropriate if the complaint were red hair!
  Sensitive. What word is that, Ned?
  Ned Testy. Diet
• On instituting a severe scrutiny into the state of your hair, from the sudden and alarming detection of a bald spot, finding yourself at least ten years nearer to a wig than you had at all apprehended.
• The season when you first begin to have a "realizing sense" of the approach of age, and before you get accustomed to the consciousness of having one forehead to many, one chin too many, and a good many teeth too few.
         Ned Testy. I should think father must have been forty-fied some years ago, against feelings of that sort. Miseries Miscellaneous
• Showing the colleges, public buildings, and other remarkables of the city, for the 500th time, to a party who discover no signs of life during the whole perambulation.
• To be interrupted in adding up a whole ledger column of figures when within four or five of the end; and then, in your rage, forgetting what you carried from the previous column, so as to be compelled to add that over to begin with.
• To look over the opposition papers the morning after paying your enormous city taxes, and see what an outrageous system of corruption your money has gone to sustain.