But I have quite forgotten what any of them are and there is really nothing (excepting the money) that I shall be at all surprised at finding among them. They tell us that on the last day the sea will give up its dead and I suppose that on the same occasion long strings of extraordinary things will come running out of my pockets. But I regard the riches stored in both these bottomless chasms with the same reverent ignorance. I suppose that the things that I have dropped into my pockets are still there the same presumption applies to the things that I have dropped into the sea.

If once anything slips into those unknown abysses, I wave it a sad Virgilian farewell. I can always tell where they are, and what I have done with them, so long as I can keep them out of my pockets. But I can always pretty satisfactorily account for all my possessions.

Perhaps it would be the exaggeration of eulogy to call me a tidy person. For in taking things out of my own pocket I had at least one of the more tense and quivering emotions of the thief I had a complete ignorance and a profound curiosity as to what I should find there.

My act can really with some reason be so described. I have only once in my life picked a pocket, and then (perhaps through some absent-mindedness) I picked my own. No one but GKC could turn a train ride with nothing to read into an adventure in pickpocketing (his own pockets, no less!) with such delightful results. If today is one of those days for you, enjoy. Some days, you just need a good visit with G.K.

In my pocket