More Jonathan Papers | Page 4

follows:--
"My dear," said she, "please run and bring me the needle from the
haystack."

"Oh, I don't know which haystack."
"Look in all the haystacks--you can't miss it; there's only one needle."
Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment. When he came up, he said,
"Did I hear any one laughing?"
"I don't know. Did you?"
"I thought maybe it was you."
"It might have been. Something amused me--I forget what."
I accused Jonathan of having written it himself, but he denied it. Some
other Jonathan, then; for, as I said, this is not a personal matter, it is a
world matter. Let us grant, then, a certain allowance for those who hunt
in woman-made haystacks. But what about pockets? Is not a man lord
over his own pockets? And are they not nevertheless as so many
haystacks piled high for his confusion? Certain it is that Jonathan has
nearly as much trouble with his pockets as he does with the corners and
cupboards and shelves and drawers of his house. It usually happens
over our late supper, after his day in town. He sets down his teacup,
struck with a sudden memory. He feels in his vest pockets--first the
right, then the left. He proceeds to search himself, murmuring, "I
thought something came to-day that I wanted to show you--oh, here! no,
that isn't it. I thought I put it--no, those are to be--what's this? No, that's
a memorandum. Now, where in--" He runs through the papers in his
pockets twice over, and in the second round I watch him narrowly, and
perhaps see a corner of an envelope that does not look like office work.
"There, Jonathan! What's that? No, not that--that!"
He pulls it out with an air of immense relief. "There! I knew I had
something. That's it."
When we travel, the same thing happens with the tickets, especially if
they chance to be costly and complicated ones, with all the shifts and
changes of our journey printed thick upon their faces. The conductor
appears at the other end of the car. Jonathan begins vaguely to fumble

without lowering his paper. Pocket after pocket is browsed through in
this way. Then the paper slides to his knee and he begins a more
thorough investigation, with all the characteristic clapping and diving
motions that seem to be necessary. Some pockets must always be
clapped and others dived into to discover their contents.
No tickets. The conductor is halfway up the car. Jonathan's face begins
to grow serious. He rises and looks on the seat and under it. He sits
down and takes out packet after packet of papers and goes over them
with scrupulous care. At this point I used to become really anxious--to
make hasty calculations as to our financial resources, immediate and
ultimate--to wonder if conductors ever really put nice people like us off
trains. But that was long ago. I know now that Jonathan has never lost a
ticket in his life. So I glance through the paper that he has dropped or
watch the landscape until he reaches a certain stage of calm and
definite pessimism, when he says, "I must have pulled them out when I
took out those postcards in the other car. Yes, that's just what has
happened." Then, the conductor being only a few seats away, I beg
Jonathan to look once more in his vest pocket, where he always puts
them. To oblige me he looks, though without faith, and lo! this time the
tickets fairly fling themselves upon him, with smiles almost curling up
their corners. Does the brownie travel with us, then?
I begin to suspect that some of the good men who have been blamed for
forgetting to mail letters in their pockets have been, not indeed
blameless, but at least misunderstood. Probably they do not forget.
Probably they hunt for the letters and cannot find them, and conclude
that they have already mailed them.
In the matter of the home haystacks Jonathan's confidence in himself
has at last been shaken. For a long time, when he returned to me after
some futile search, he used to say, "Of course you can look for it if you
like, but it is not there." But man is a reasoning, if not altogether a
reasonable, being, and with a sufficient accumulation of evidence,
especially when there is some one constantly at hand to interpret its
teachings, almost any set of opinions, however fixed, may be shaken.
So here.

Once when we shut up the farm for the winter I left my fountain pen
behind. This was little short of a tragedy, but I comforted myself with
the knowledge that Jonathan was going back that week-end for a day's
hunt.
"Be sure to get the pen first of all,"