Chasing your Hat

When I was in high school I read A Tale of Two Cities and loved it. I've tried to get back to Dickens a few times since, but on Memorial Day is when I finally got into him. I decided to read The Pickwick Papers, partly because we have a pub in Duluth called The Pickwick and partly because it is Dickens early work and I have a strange compulsion that makes me want to read authors in order. It's brill. Anyway, in addition to a number of wonderful short stories interspersed with an engaging narrative I came across this nugget:

There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat. A vast deal of coolness, and a peculiar degree of judgment, are requisite in catching a hat. A man must not be precipitate, or he runs over it; he must not rush into the opposite extreme, or he loses it altogether. The best way is, to keep gently up with the object of pursuit, to be wary and cautious, to watch your opportunity well, get gradually before it, then make a rapid dive, seize it by the crown, and stick it firmly on your head: smiling pleasantly all the time, as if you thought it as good a joke as anybody else.