The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-07
HER HUSBANDS POCKETS.

The Wife's Immemorial Right to Go Through Them.
 The other day a magistrate of this town gave the opinion, perhaps it Is
 more accurate to say the dctum, that
 a woman has no right to ''go through"
 her husbands pockets We don't
 know that there Is any light on the
 subject in tie year books. Most of
 women's rights have grown up since
 them and where did the tyrant man
 wear his pockets in earlier days? Is
 there anything in Froissart or any
 body else to show where Edward the
 black prince in all his armor kept his
 change and how he got at itP Where
 did Godfrey of Bouilon hide his latch
 key? It is idle to tell us of pouch and
 girdle Robin Hood knew where to
 find the treasury of the gentlemen
 whom he invited to contribute to the
 support of poor man whose leesh had
 forbidden him to eat anything but ven
 ison, but did the sheriff of Nottingham
 have anything that could properly be
 called trousers pocket? Did Blue
 beard or Henry VIII, in all his glory
 and his plethora of matrimonial ven
 lures ever have in hose or doublet
 pocket which could really be described
 as a change pocket? "Ho, good my al- moner, fling me rose noble to yon merry minstrel" o, we have read his
 torical novels and know their lovely
 language, but we defy anybody to prove that any law of the easement of wives in the pockets of their husbands can be traced until the origin and his tory of the pocket have been more fully explained.
 Yet unless human nature was very backward, the women must have exer- cised from immemorial times the priv ilege, since grown into a right, of in- specting the hoards or caches of their husbands. They may not have looked for love letters, writing schools being then uncommon and the club or adze taking the place of the complete letter writer; but we may be sure that they abstracted acorns, thus laying uncon- sciously but solidly the foundation for the beneflcent principle of an allow ance. There were pockets in the earth or the tree or lake; it is no paradox to say that pockets came before clothes. And when the noble savage made him a coat Of the skin of goat, woman was there to share his tolls: also his receipts. We have no doubt that Po- cahontas, that Virginia nonpareil, went through Master Rolfe's pockets as ar as if she had been bred with in the sound of Bow Bells.
 By prescription and age-long custom, a married woman has obtained the right to search In her husbands pock- eas. Economically the custom is or has been justifiable. Woman has had to take her own wherever she could find It. Morally the custom is salutary It shows a man the necessity Of wary II holds fellow to a stand ard, warns him to be careful in his cor corrects his avarice or his A woman begins, if we may hazard a theory, by searching her boys pockets, sure to contain many surprising and some noXious objects. | She has to become a censor and inspec- tor of masculine treasures. Then in the present day when most men who | Ire not sailors or soldiers have lost the | art of sewing, she is the pocket maker, he pocket patcher. She makes the | pockets She keeps them In order. She | las clear title to toll, rent or whatev- l 1T you want to call it: the woman's | penny. Without her the supercilious | 3east wouldn't have any pockets. She |