DEFINITION _Pocket_, s. the small bag inserted into
clothes.--WALKER (_a new edition, by Hookey_).
We are great on the subject of pockets--we acknowledge it--we avow it.
From our youth upwards, and we are venerable now, we have made them the
object of untiring research, analysis, and speculation; and if our
exertions have occasionally involved us in contingent predicaments, or our
zeal laid us open to conventional misconstructions, we console ourselves
with Galileo and Tycho Brahe, who having, like us, discovered and arranged
systems too large for the scope of the popular intellect, like us, became
the martyrs of those great principles of science which they have
immortalized themselves by teaching.
The result of a course of active and careful (s)peculations on the
philosophy and economy of pockets, has led us to the conviction that their
intention and use are but very imperfectly understood, even by the
intelligent and reflective section of the community. It is, we fear, a
very common error to regard them as conventional recesses, adapted for the
reception and deposit of such luxurious additaments to the attire as are
detached, yet accessory and indispensable ministers to our comfort. Now
this delusive supposition is diametrically opposed to the truth. Pockets
(we must be plain)--pockets are not made _to put into_, but to _take out
of_; and, although it is of course necessary that, in order to produce the
result of withdrawal, they be previously furnished with the wherewithal to
withdraw, yet the process of insertion and supply is only carried on for
the purpose of assisting the operation of the system.
And having, we trust, logically established this point, we shall hazard no
incautious position in asserting that the man who empties a pocket,
fulfils the object for which it was founded and established. And although,
unhappily, a prejudice still exists in the minds of the uneducated, in
favour of emptying their own pockets themselves, it must be evident that
none but a narrow mind can take umbrage at the trifling acceleration of an
event which must inevitably occur; or would desire to appropriate the
credit of the distribution, as well as to deserve the merit of the supply.
We perceive with concern and apprehension, that pockets are gradually
falling into disuse. To use the flippant idiom of the day, they are going
out! This is an alarming, as well as a lamentable fact; and one, too,
strikingly illustrative of the degeneracy of modern fashions. Whether we
ascribe the change to a contemptuous neglect of ancestral institutions, or
to an increasing difficulty in furnishing the indispensable attributes of
the pocket, it is alike indicative of a crisis; and we confess that it is
matter of astonishment to us, that in these days of theory and hypothesis,
no man has ventured to trace the distress and the ruin now impending over
the country, to the increasing disrespect and disuse of--pockets.
By way of approving our conjecture, let us contrast the garments of the
hour with those of England in the olden time--long ago, when boards smoked
and groaned under a load of good things in every man's house; when the
rich took care of the poor, and the poor took care of themselves; when
husband and wife married for love, and lived happily (though that must
have been very long ago indeed); the athletic yeoman proceeded to his
daily toil, enveloped in garments instinct with pockets. The ponderous
watch--the plethoric purse--the massive snuff-box--the dainty
tooth-pick--the grotesque handkerchief; all were accommodated and
cherished in the more ample recesses of his coat; while supplementary fobs
were endeared to him by their more seductive contents: _as_ ginger
lozenges, love-letters, and turnpike-tickets. Such were the days on which
we should reflect with regret; such were the men whom we should imitate
and revere. Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch,
met an individual enveloped in a shapeless cylindrical tube of pale
Macintosh--impossible for taste--incapable of pockets--indefinite and
indefinable--we question whether he would have regarded him in the light
of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy--whether he would not have
handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being
too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet--for our prolixity
warns us to conclude--and yet the festering contagion of this baneful
example is now-a-days hidden under the mask of fashion. FASHION! and has
it indeed come to this? Is fashion to trample on the best and finest
feelings of our nature? Is fashion to be permitted to invade us in our
green lanes, and our high roads, under our vines and our fig-trees,
without hindrance, and without pockets? For the sake of human nature, we
hope not--for the sake of our bleeding country, we hope not. No! "Take
care of your pockets!" is one of the earliest maxims instilled into the
youthful mind; and emphatically do we repeat to our
fellow-countrymen--Englishmen, take care of your pockets!
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