THE USES OF THE POCKET.

Dunstan Times, Issue 514, 23 February 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE USES OF THE POCKET.

Who does not remember his or her first pocket; when the expanding intellect was promoted to the care of its own pocket handkerchief! How we felt in it, boasted of depth, and tested its capacity by trying to cram everything w)iich we could call “oar own” into its elongated orifice ! Hdw the early pockets of life differentiate the two sexes ! The girls with, pins and needles, occasionally stuck and folded neatly into little scraps of paper or cloth, but far more frequently loose, balls of cotton always unwound, skeins of silk in a perpetual tangle, and cuttings of serge and satin agreeably commingled with the pet legs and arms of fraternally dismembered dolls. The boys with apples and alloy-taws, knives with two blades that will never quite shut, stioksof slatgpencil, marvellously pointed, wooden pea and quill potatoshooters, and, above all, peg-tops, buttons, and lumps of chalk and lengths of string, with, later on, short pieces of it.uC curiously burnt and blackened by furtive attempts at “smoking.” What a host of sweetand sad memories the mere mention of these happy days of skirt and tmser pocket recalls!

Some excellent and'joyous spirits there are who contrive to prolong the happy poekot epoch, with its little sorrows and rejoicing over carefully lost and accidentally found sixpences and important memoranda. Thrice blessed mortals, always bewildered but ever young.

A general emptying ot pockets. Who dare face so close a scrutiny into the secrets of life and character ! What disclosures of weakness and wantonness would ensue ! How many reputations for method and exemplary propriety must be shattered, and how few could hope to survive so severe an ordeal! There is a species of man

who is always in a muddle, but who contrives, with the aid of a ready faculty of excuse, to keep his secret, so that nobody, besides himself, knows the multiplicity and extent of his short comings. How would he like to turn out his pockets with tlieir chaos of letters, papers, mis-laid reminders, and unpaid bills! He studs everything into this much abused receptacle, with a dim sense of having done, or about to do, his duty, and forgets all about it immediately afterwards Letters to be read, answered, or posted, all go into the same oblivion, and are turned out sometimes days, weeks, or or even years, and perhaps never, afterwards. lie can find nothing when he wants it, and it was always in looking for something else that he again lights upon it. Without a pocket ho would be miserable. It is the abyss wherein ho buries all bis disagreeables, but, as the useful and agreeable things go there too, ho is almost as much a loser as a gainer by tho convenience. Happy is the innocent muddler if he has some happy kindly hand at home to supervise his lumber bug, and especially to be pitied is the genius who, with such a propensity for disorder, is left wholly to the mercy of his servants. What qualms of conscience and surges of worry must come over him when ho reflects what the pockets in that coat so carelessly cast aside may contain, and to how mmyoflds own and other people's secrets they would supply (he clue! To make a confident of a friend with bulky pockets is an act of folly, likely to bo fraught with tho most awkward consequences. The use made of the pocket is a sure indication of character. The manor (Woman who confounds its functions with the domestic tidy is not more seriously at fault than the eccentric being who makes it play tho part of a kit or saddle bag. There are individuals

who cany about in their pockets all the appliance of every day life and .vicissitude; relays of handkerchiefs, cigar-cases, nail-scissors, knives, combs, looking-glass, ever-pointed pencils, apparatus for extracting stones from horses’ shoes, dictionaries, mariners’ compasses, tooth-picks, water-proof coats, travelling caps, balls of string, boxes of match) s, telescopes, penny postage-stamps, and, most wonderful of all, pocket-umbrellas. It is the playful boast of such complete furnishers that they can go anywhere without change of raiment, and it is easy to believe them. But they are people to be admired rather than imitated. Useful to know, they are unpleasant to deal with. One or two human caravans attached to a party bound for a foreign clime may be all very well, but anything in excess of that proportion is a nuisance, more particularly as everything the pedestrian pocket lends or bestows is doled out with a supercilious courtesy which implies plainly that he thinks you ought to carry it yourself. A wellregulated pocket is tire token of a wellregulated mind. It should neither contain too much nor too little, and whatever its contents, they ought to be in the most perfect order. The primary and only purpose of the pocket is to put things in, not to serve as a receptacle for idle hands. A somewhat laborious attempt has been made to prove that the boy who goes about with his hands in his pockets must needs grow up a dolt. It is to he feared that this theory will rfet bear the test of experience. If all the grown-up boys who go about hands in pockets were deficient in point of intellect, the number of idiots in the world would be very large indeed. It is, however a fact, that, within moderate limits, and with a

certain amount of reserve, the habit of using the pockets as gloves, handbaskets, cr warmers, bespeaks an absence of earnest business purpose .and industry, which is not a promising quality. Some people appear to use then; pockets as mufflers to keep: their hands out of mischief. Public '-speakers of a certain type are very inn eh adnieted to this'practico, probably an intuitive expedient to save themselves from the danger of having their attention diverted from what they are saying by anything which their unruly extremities may be doing. To judge from the ungainly fashion in which the hands of unaccustomed or timid speakers are wont to crush hats —not always' the property of their masters—and come down heavily in the shape of impassioned pounding or what are familiarly known as “ crowpitches” on the heads of unoffending auditors, the precaution is not altogether needless. Particularly labo-riously-minded people seem to carry their hands in their pockets whenever thiy are doing Nothing, as a demonstrative intimation to the world in general that they have nothing to do. The habit has grown up among sailors, possibly oil this principle. We are all children, and indicate our moods and states of being ami fueling by mannerism of act and bearing. Persons of great importance and conscious wisdom, great authorities, and consulting sort of people, carry their hands in their pockets, as who should say, “ Look at me, ray days of doing are past, I am enjoying the fruits of my labors. lam a person of experience.” The elementary idea is rest from labor.