POCKETS.
METAPHORICALLY speaking, most people wish for " a free hand." So they do literally, very hterally indeed ; for they only seem to want one. The desire to have one hand occupied, to have something to carry, is almost universal. Our savage ancestors carried a club. We carry a walking-stick or an umbrella. What the womenfolk who walked out with the savage had in their hands we do not know, but we may be sure they carried something—more than one thing in all probability. They were certainly not content to have both hands free. Among the men of to-day this curious wish to hold some object when they get outside their own doors is partly explicable upon utilitarian grounds. We never know when it will rain ; and we are not absolutely eertain that we may not meet with attack from some creature upon four legs or two, although the contingency is very unlikely. Protection from weather or from enemies does not, however, necessitate our carry- ing anything in our hands. Soldiers have their swords strapped to their persons ; policemen put their truncheons into sheath's ; and we could easily strap our umbrellas to our sides if we liked to do so. They need not be as long as they are. They could be made of a length to affix to the waist without any danger of getting between our legs and throwing us down ; or like a sword they could be balanced in a slanting position. But no ; for some reason or other we wish to clasp them—otherwise we " do not know what to do with our hands." The phrase, be it noticed, however, should be used in the singular. A man likes to have at least his left hand free. If he has to carry a despatch-case or a parcel he does so because he must, because he is at the moment in harness, and yields to the necessities of his work. With women, however, this is not so. Even one free hand seems unnecessary to them—witness their delight in handbags. They will have a parasol or an umbrella, and they will have a handbag too. Look at your feminine neighbours in church or in a theatre : every hand has a bag attached to it. The shop windows teem with fancy bags, and so greatly are they prized by all classes of society that those women who are obliged to do their own marketing in the mornings impeded by something almost as big as a sack, or at least able to contain a leg of mutton and a cauliflower, never leave behind them the ornamental little receptacle in which to stuff a hand- kerchief, a purse, and, if they are young, a looking-glass. A few years ago these necessaries were carried about their persons. A good-sized pocket was neatly sewed into every skirt. But that was not because women wanted to free their hands. In those days skirts were long and had to be held out of the dirt. Go back a little further and you find the " reticule " again. The fashions alter- nate, but feminine human nature remains unchanged ; and we have no doubt that when " Lucy Locket lost her pocket " she had either a short skirt on or a child by the hand.
Trailing skirts will not come in again till when fashion for health goes out, and that, we hope, will be never ; so we may take it that, at least among those who regard the mode, handbags have come to stay. They are a costly inconvenience. Twenty-five shillings is a cheap price for a really pretty one, and we imagine that one-and-eleven " is the cheapest price at which• a " slightly defective " specimen could be bought at a sale. Many represent either several pounds or many hours of diligent embroidery and much expenditure of eyesight upon beads. Apart from material consideration, they impose a great strain upon the memory, and the moral issues they involve cannot be entirely left out of consideration. These bags are the easiest things in the world to lose. They are left in trains and buses and shops and pews, and sought for in vain at police-stations, vestries and Scotland Yard. Their attraction in un- principled feminine eyes would appear to be well-nigh irresistible ; and the sort of women who appear in the dock on a charge of stealing them are such as may charit- ably be supposed to have yielded to the temptation of the moment and not such as make a business of theft. In taking a bag a thief embarks on a gamble. No one can say what pig may be in the poke. Some people keep not only their purses and their watches, but their rings in them. So far as the rings are concerned, the present writer has entirely failed in his efforts to think out their reasons for so doing. Anyhow, those who lose their bags, whatever they may have contained of value and however heartbroken they may appear about the loss, never put pockets into their skirts. They buy another bag, and renew a solemn determination to keep it always in their hands and on their minds.
We are constantly hearing that woman has developed a new love of freedom. Nonsense ! Nobody loves free- dom so well as they think they do ; but women will always love it less than men. What we all love is a tie. The whole progress of civilization is the search for ties ; but a man—being less civilized than his sister— can do with fewer. The most civilized half of the community will never be content with freedom. The better the woman, the less she gin endure it. Take the girls of the cultivated class t1-day. Were ever better young women ? They will not remain at home " at a loose end." They will go out and look for " ties " of work. Take the married woman whose big children are at school or flown from the nest. She cannot accept her freedom from domestic duties. She will have a tie if it is only a philanthropic one. At heart she may know that sitting on committees and attending meetings is not much use, and at best is inconvenient : but at obviates the boredom of being her own mistress and delivers her from the horror of having to " retire "—that state of bliss to which her husband looks so wistfully forward. So far as women are concerned, the fashions they create are the mirror of the essentials they demand. In their trivial ways as well as their serious ways we learn to read their souls, even in so trivial a fashion as the self- imposed and gratuitous burden of the bead bag.
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