LOST PROPERTY.
SMALL objects of lost property go up in value—in imagination. Their charms are enhanced from the moment that we miss them. The greatcoat or umbrella, the knife or the pen, which we lost is always better than that we have ; and as for the sovereign we inadvertently gave away in mistake for a shilling, a five-pound-note could not replace it ! Indeed, it never can be replaced. All lost trinkets would adorn the finest shop in Bond Street as soon as they have left their owner ; and as to a lost first edition why the contents of the best bookshop in London would hardly make up for that. It is a peculiar form of chagrin which the losses that we can afford give us. It differs not only in degree but in kind from that which wa feel about our great losses. It is not as a fraction of our whole property that we regret the coin, or the book, or the jewel which we lost. It has its own little entity, and creates its own little regrets.
Is not the same thing true in the immaterial world P There is a ":ost property office" in most men's memory, where depotiptions of many small valuables which once were theirs are registered, though in this immaterial storehouse no treasure can be redeemed either for love or money. Perhaps the most regrettable losses which can properly be called small come under the heading of minor intimacies, or, if we may so say, secondary friendships. Maybe they are hardly worthy of the name of friendships, but one must use it for want of a better word, and they certainly leave sad blanks as soon as we realise that they are at an end. How did it happen that we lost them P Alas ! it is only too easy as a rule to recall the circumstances. One perhaps was stolen from us ; another we let slip through carelessness ; and a third we threw away in a temper. Very likely they were never really as much to us as we now imagine. Memory forces us all sometimes to look through magnifying glasses. Indignation against the thief may make us overvalue the thing stolen. Friend-stealers make many enemies, more. possibly sometimes than they deserve. Probably, if we think dispassionately about the matter, we shall realise that the thief was a greater friend than we were of the man whose friendship we have lost,—one of those great friends who give lesser friends no standing-room. Often such people are sincere and affectionate notwithstanding their egotism, willing to make sacrifices and run risks, willing, indeed, to do anything for the man or woman to whom they have attached themselves if only they can leave nothing to any one else to do. They are determined to be indispensable and they desire that as large a circle as possible should recognise the fact, Small celebrities are specially liable to be taken in charge by these monopolists. It is a sad thing for society, because, in spite of the ridicule heaped upon what one may call their title, these oelebrities are as a rule exceedingly pleasant, owing the consideration they receive quite as much to their personalities as their parts, and it is a pity for all their acquaintance that they should be, as it were, screened off from the world. Most of us are too proud to hold on to a minor friendship which some one else is trying to wrest from us; we let it go, and deplore the loss.
Now and then a mauvaise langue will destroy a pleasant intimacy. To most of us such a misfortune has happened. The sort of false impression has been conveyed by which congenial companions are divided. Had the thing been of sufficient importance, it might easily have been put right ; but we did not think it worth while to act in the matter till too late. Besides, we probably resented the credulity more than the slander. Again, who has not known what it is to lament a budding friendship, the first chapter of what might have been a really pleasant companionship, lost through sheer carelessness ? Perhaps we neglected some courtesy which was expected of us because we were too lazy to give attention to it, or too much out of spirits to leave our own fireside. Perhaps we omitted to write a letter. Every day we intended to write, and every day we put it off. Remiss as we were, we trusted that we should some day take the friendship up again where we laid it down, and were greatly dismayed to find that it had faded away. How pleasant it looks to the mind's eye, that old intimacy. It would have developed, we feel sure, into something more definite and of greater worth ; perhaps it would have brought us worldly advantage. Anyhow, whether it was our own fault or not, we have lost it. After all, however, we do not think bitterly about it. Sometimes the remembrance helps to make up the scenery in our dreams of ambition, or the incident ce.la be so rearranged as to adorn the unending romance of the "might-have-been." On the other hand, there is a certain bitterness connected with the memory of the good things we really threw away. How much agreeable association is destroyed by argumentation. It is safer to embark upon controversy with a great friend than with a friendly acquaintance. The demon who suggests to the controversialist the expediency of persecution is more easily kept at bay. Almost all ardent arguers remember with a pang the day when, having failed by fair means to persuade a worthy opponent to give up the ideas to which he was born, they purposely hurt his feelings in the forlorn hope of forcing an intellectual capitulation. They failed, of course—how could such tactics succeed ?—and found to their cost that they had lost his kindness and left him his conviction.
But these losses which we have been discussing are all fairly serious. There are many much slighter ones which give us discomfort, losses of illusions, and delusions, and even pre- judices; which leave us feeling poorer, even though we may hardly wish to go back to the state of mind in which we indulged them. To take a very small matter, no one wishes seriously to be a leas perspicacious critic of any art than he is at the present date. Yet he may regret the simple enjoyments of less critical days, and there are moments when we all feel as though our losses were heavy in this respect, and we grow sentimental about the delights that once were ours,— that commonplace poem which stirred our hearts, that cloying music which delighted our ears, that woman whom we loved in a picture or in a story, and who now seems uninteresting to our awakened taste. The lady and the song have alike lost their vitality ; to us, indeed, they are lost altogether. As we think of them we recall our first philosophy of life, the short but comprehensive system of thought into which we honestly believed that all our subsequent experience would fit. Probably we were amused when we suddenly realised that it was gone. It was only later on that we reflected that it was a very real loss. Losses of prejudice are, as a rule, first made known to us by the congratulations of friends. Our impulse is to deny that we ever entertained them, but secretly we feel a sense of regret. They seemed sometimes to warm our hearts, and the cold scraps of toleration wherewith they ale replaced give us little comfort, though they make a fair show. But, after all, we may dwell too long on our small losses. Let us shut the doors and windows of the" lost property office" and leave its contents in the dark. If we brush aside sentiment, we shall find that half the things we have lost were crowded out by gains. Our hands and our minds were full of new possessions when we let the old ones slip.
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