buttonhole

He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest:

What tree of more pulchritude and symmetricalness could you nominate for roadside, street and public park planting than the graceful linden? We should possess more of the spirit which predominates in this direction in the crowning gem of America’s constitutionality—the City of Washington, D. C. ‘‘Unter den Lindens’’ would not only be found in Germany, but in all the large cities of our grand and glorious United States. Washington has her Unter den Linden in the Massachussetts avenue. Her North and South Capital streets are buttonholed with the stately tulips, which are fit emblems to thus adorn the meridian of the United States.

Furze cut it himself after his dinner, with great care and concentrated solemnity, finding the loaf rather too new and the knife too blunt for the carving of slices of ideal thinness. The beastly things would buttonhole!