Evening star., 1931-12-11
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

! bell which will ring to warn the world
of the error.
Nor is there any red flag which viii
be hoisted If In q file of consecutive
| documents one is discovered missing
Some one may have distracted 1t ane
failed to put 1t back.
| The interesting question Is this:
| Why is the only missing one the very
one the searcher wants?
| Here are 90 papers, each one care
| fully documented But 1t Is never the
ninety and nine the searcher seeks; IL
| is the hundredth.
Always it is the one which is not
there, 1t seems.
"Oid man, you need new filing sys-
| tenn" says some one. Nov, I don't
want to take any OF your time, but
And he sits down and takes it.
Women in particular have a great
habit Of putting things away carefully
as they say.
Putting a thing away carefully, of
course, means hiding it so completely
| that no one, not even the person who
put 1t there, can ever find it.
| A place for everything and everything
| in Its place-that was the old, orderly
maxim, and a good one, too, but it pre-
supposes an intensely orderly person.
He who always lays his pipe away in
the top drawer of the secretary will be
able to find it again If he invariably
puts 1t there.
1t is only when he forgets his sys-
| tenn and puts 1t in another compart-
ment that he forgets where he laid it.
| Thus the system of systems undoubt-
edly is sameness. Once in the ton
drawer always in the top drawer. Then
| the thing is done by instinct.
| The primary fault, then, in the failure
! to find things lies In the human ele-
ment. The can era is not on the shelf
where one placed it, not because it has
material spite against the owner and
has moved itself, but because the would
| be picture taker left it at the Office or
some other member OF the household
moved it.
Thus cooperation may be said to be
the keynote of success In this matter
as in many others. Some people will
be inclined to say that most OF the
| trouble in failing to find things comes
because of the "other person. who will
| not leave ones desk alone, or who in
| sists on running away with the very
| copy Of the magazine one happens to
want or who has a mania for tijineSs.
There viii be some truth to this as
sertion. often what appears to be dis
| order to one will be very orderly to
another. Many a lawyers office is a
| prime instance of this. The essentially
prim and tidy person may regard it as
disorderly mass Of papers, old filing
cases and muSty documents.
The lawyer, however, knows to q
! jacket just where he has put away all
his briefs. He has his clients business
well in hand and asks for no assistance
Ap orderly person might create such
confusion by setting things to rights
that the attorney would not be able to
find single thing he wanted
The same applies to many desk.
apparently untidy and chaotic to an
outsider but well kept and vastly or
derly from the viewpoint of the desk
user himself.
Just as some people have curious per-
sonal systems of remembering things so
such desk-users possess their own ways
OF knowing where what they seek is.
Like the fsmous lambs which come
home wagging their tails behind them,
such users of papers and documents
will find them If you will let them
alone.