Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1876-12-08
Pockets.

A London magistrate lately told a wO-
man whose pockets had been picked, that
if women would change the position and
plan of their pockets, they would not so
frequently suffer from the depredations of
| light-fngered thieves This was jucicial
opinion of remarkable acuteness and excep-
tional value, in so far as it indicated the
true reason why women are the favorite
prey of pickpockets. Still, it is one thing
TO point out an evil that deserves to be
remedied, and quite another to designate
the remedy. The court which denounced
the present female substitute for a pocket
did not suggest any practicable improve
ment upon it, and indeed it is doubtful if
any man who is not professional scientific
person is fully capable of dealing with so
! difficult question.
Man is marsupial, and herein he is broad
| " distinguished from woman. Nature has
provided man with pockets in his trousers,
his waistcoat, and his coat. The number
is not always the same, some men having
in the aggregate twelve distinct pockets
great and small-while others have only
eight or nine; but man totally without
pockets would be a lalslts nature. 1t is re-
markable that pockets are net congenital,
but are slowly developed during childhood
and youth. The trousers-poekets, which
are earliest developed, seldom make their
appearance before the fifth year, and one
of these usually comes to maturity ten or
twelve months before its fellow. About
the eighth year male child develops two
and sometimes three coat-pockets, and two
| years later the lower vest-pockets appear.
| Nature then pauses in her work, and it is
not until the fourteenth year that the
small fob-pockets of the waistcoat and the
watch-pocket of the trousers are developed.
The appearance of the pistol-pockeJ and
| the two coat-tail-pockets is usually syn
| chronous with the cutting of the wisdom
teeth. When these have reached maturity,
the normal development of pockets ceases
for the comparatively recent discovery of
| isolated specimens of men with pockets in
| the sleeves of their overcoat, apparently
designed for slowing away female hands.
does not as yet, warrant any change in the
scientific classification and description of
human pockets.
OF the uses of the pocket it is unneeessa-
| ~ to speak, since we are all familiar with
/ them. It may. however. be safely asserted
that without pockets men would never
have emerged from barbarism. Handker-
| chiefs, pen-knives. money, tobacco, latch
keys-those articles the presence of which
| is essential to civilization, and the absence
/ Of which constitutes barbarism-manltest-
| ly could not exist in any useful form had
| not beneficent nature endowed us with
pockets. 1t is significant fact that the
| higher a man rises in the scale Of civiliza-
ton, the more numerous become his pock-
! cts. The red man has no pocket whatever;
| the Turk has two pockets; The people of
the south Of Europe have rarely more than
five, while the man of Anglo-Saxon blood
/ has nine, or-counting those in his over
coat-tep well-defined and practicable
pockets. Representative government, fine
cut tobacco, trial by jury, and revolving
pistols are the precious inheritance of the
nine-pocketed races. Ignorance, superSti-
tion, and general assortment Of miseries
are the lot Of those who have not develop
ed more than four or five pockets.
Why nature constructed women without
true pockets il does not become us to in
quire, although the fact might easily be in
terpreted as an evidence that women are