The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1873-04-24
Meum and Tuum.

JUST the point at which indistinst ideas
OF 'neun1 and tu,tm cease to be "absent-
min 'ed'' and become "rather strange" is
a difficult one to fix upon. Is it books, is
it umbrellas, is it canes, is it overcoats
Books are fairly on the hither side of the
mark. a passion even for purloining
literature is rather humane and elevated
one. A taste for reading can scarcely, one
would think, exist in the same bosom
with so low propensity as theving The
public conscience is generous upon the
subject of umbrellas. But when people
go to appropriating triiles of less fiuctu-
ating value, the question then becomes
what we call "delicate." There are per-
sons in every community who do
''strange" things; their friends never
speak of it; the secret is kept most jul
dlciously by the entire village. The indi-
vidual so addicted is said to be "peculiar, ;"
though his friends do not believe that he
''mt ans" any wrong. Our readers will
| designate. Still making large allow
ance for the number of such "pecuiiar'
| people, it can not be that there are enough
OF them, recognized as such in the COM
munity, to account for the fact that the
man who loses a gold-headed cane or a
! silk umbrella, with his name and address
marked upon it, has nine chances out of
ten that he will never see it again.
or course, there are, we know, large
class of professional thieves; there is also a
still larger class of persons who will ap-
propriate other peoples property when
chance presents itself, but society has not
been prepared to believe that the number
of the latter class is so large as the alarm
ing facts would seem to indicate. Leave
an overcoat with your address in the
pocket, where it is not watched. and, of
course, you must get another. Any cane
or umbrella, however distinctly marked,
will meet the same fate. Now there is a
reason why it is unsafe to leave canes and
overcoats about. If hundred people saw
the cane, all the honest ones would sup
pose it was put there by its owner and
that it was none of their business-and
the honest ones might number ten or fifty
or ninety out of the hundred.
But when you lose money in the street,
the case is different. Any man, honest or
otherwise, would stop to pick up note
or greenback on the pavement. Should
a curious eXperimenter in public morals
take ten tive-dollar notes, and put each
of them into an envelope with his name
and address, and drop them carefully at
different points of crowded thorough.
fare, how many of them would be return
ed We do not imagine that any philos-
Opher ever lived who was sufficiently Gu
riOus and sufficiently flush to make the
experiment. But our weak faith and our
unlucky experience incline us to the opin-
ion that very few of these greenbacks
thrown upon the waters would be gath
cred after many days. We have heard of
one old gentleman who turned misan- |
thrope upon being swindled out of some
money, and who devoted the remainder |
of his life to riding up and down in the
and handing up the fares. In
returning change to the occupants, he al
ways added a penny more than was due,
and his qualification was intense when las
happened nine times out of ten) the tray-
eler looked pleased and surprised and
pocketed the money.
The Chinese have very queer notion
that lost valuable is by right the prop
erty of the finder. Should Chinaman
see you pick up his own lost jewel or
lagger in the street, it would never occur
70 him to claim it. He would not claim