Women's, on the contrary, are
always made with the buttons on the left side, and the button-holes on
the right. (The occult reason for this curious distinction, which has
long engaged the attention of philosophers, has never yet been
discovered, but it is probably to be accounted for by the perversity of
women.) Well, if a man tries to put on a woman's waterproof, or a woman
to put on a man's ulster, each will find that neither hand is readily
able to perform the part of the other. A man, in buttoning, grasps the
button in his right hand, pushes it through with his right thumb, holds
the button-hole open with his left, and pulls all straight with his
right forefinger. Reverse the sides, and both hands at once seem
equally helpless.
It is curious to note how many little peculiarities of dress or
manufacture are equally necessitated by this prime distinction of right
and left. Here are a very few of them, which the reader can indefinitely
increase for himself. (I leave out of consideration obvious cases like
boots and gloves: to insult that proverbially intelligent person's
intelligence with those were surely unpardonable.) A scarf habitually
tied in a sailor's knot acquires one long side, left, and one short one,
right, from the way it is manipulated by the right hand; if it were tied
by the left, the relations would be reversed. The spiral of corkscrews
and of ordinary screws turned by hand goes in accordance with the
natural twist of the right hand: try to drive in an imaginary corkscrew
with the right hand, the opposite way, and you will see how utterly
awkward and clumsy is the motion.
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