ing! It is almost worth while losing something just for the fun
of looking for it! If a catalogue or a circular will only go astray,
all the excitements of a chase lie open before me. And the things that
I shall find! I shall come on letters that will make me laugh and
letters that will make me cry. Hullo, what's this? Dear me, I must
write to so-and-so, or he will think I have forgotten him! And just
look here! I must run round and see what's-his-name this afternoon,
and fix this matter up. And so I go on. The probability is that I
shall no more find the catalogue that set me searching than I found the
peg-top in the days of auld lang syne; but what has that to do with it?
Look at the things I have found, the memories I have revived, the tasks
that have been suggested! Life has been incalculably enriched by the
fruits of this search through the papers on my study table. If I do
not find the peg-top-papers for which I sought, I have found
cricket-ball-papers immensely more valuable, and the rapture of my
sensational discoveries renders the fate of my poor peg-top-papers a
matter of comparative indifference. The series of thrills produced by
such a search is reminiscent of the emotions with which I enjoyed my
first magic-lantern entertainment. On they came, one after another,
those wonderful, wonderful pictures in the darkness. On they came, one
after another, these startling surprises from out these musty-fusty
piles of papers. A search is really a marvellous experience. The
imagination flies with lightning rapidity from one world of things to
another and another as the papers rustle between the fingers. John
Ploughman used to say that, even if the fowls got nothing by it, it did
them good to scratch. I am not a poultry expert, as I am frequently
reminded, but I dare say that there is a wealth of wisdom in the
observation. At any rate, I know that, in my own case, the success or
failure of my search expeditions stand in no way related to the
original object of my quest. I never remember having set out to look
for a thing, and afterwards regretted having done so.

I was wondering the other day if the same principle applied to other
people, and I cruelly determined on a little experiment. My girls
collect orchids, and much of their time in the city is spent in
recounting the foraging expeditions that they have conducted in happy
days gone by, and in anticipating similar adventures in the golden
times