shelves of libraries, or even lying about upon
tables and chiffonniers, arc but a small per
centage of the number continually issuing from
the press. What becomes of the thousand-page
novels which appear, in great numbers, in the
course of every season? How does it happen
that our rooms are not entirely surrounded
with full book-shelves, or that there exists in
any apartment, hall, or passage, any vacant
portion of flat space unoccupied by books on
which to put things down? Hundreds of thousands
of volumes are cast upon the world every
year, and have been since one is afraid to
say when; where are they all at this present
writing? The booksellers' shops furnish an
account of some, the librarians of others, and
some the trunkmakers and the buttermen know
about, but the rest—where are they?

In these days, as in all the days which have
preceded these days, all sorts of articles of
wearing apparel become the mode, are worn
for a short time by everybody, and are then by
everybody cast off and rejected. What is the
destiny of those rejected articles? When steel
petticoats disappear, what becomes of them?
When the ordinary hat worn by Englishmen is
reduced to a height of from six to six and
a half inches, what becomes of the hats,
seven and eight inches high, of which the
hatters' shops were full a few months ago?
Where are the Wellington boots, of which
the shoemakers' shops used to display long
rows? Where are the steel châtelains which
ladies used to carry at their girdles? Where
are the Malacca canes of our youth? Even
the footmen have discarded their use, we
know; but what has become of them? They
must be somewhere, hi some form. Where?
And in what form?

Numbers of people have entirely bewildered
and stupefied themselves in endeavours to
arrive at some rational conclusion on the subject
of pins. The statistical accounts of the
numbers of pins turned out annually at Birmingham
and Sheffield alone, would lead one to
expect that the earth itself would present
the appearance of a vast pincushion. Where
are those pins of which the yearly fabrication
is on so vast a scale? Fins are not consumed
as an article of diet. Pins do not evaporate.
Pins must be somewhere. All the pins which
have been made since civilisation set in, must
be in existence in some shape or other; we
ought to see nothing else, look in what direction
we might, but pins. This island, not to
meddle with other countries, ought to be knee
deep in pins. Reader, how many pins are
imported into your own house in the course of
the year? Do you know what becomes of
those pins? There are a few in your wife's
pincushion, and one may occasionally be seen
gleaming in the housemaid's waistband; but
where are the rest? It is perfectly astounding
how seldom one encounters a pin "on the
loose." Now and then, by rare chance, as
when a carpet is taken up, you may catch a
glimpse of a pin lying in a crevice; but even
this is an uncommon occurrence, and not to be
counted upon. You often want a pin, and
take trouble to get a pin. Where are all the
pins that ought to be always in attendance
everywhere?

What can possibly become of all the steel
pens, of which myriads are continually turned
loose upon the world? Each individual pen
does not last for a very long time. Left
unwiped, as they generally are, steel pens soon
begin to corrode and to get unfit for use.
What do we do with them? We take them
out of their holders, replace them with others,
and leave the old pens lying about in the pen-
trays of our desks, or where not. They are
awkward things to get rid of, and mostly lie
about uncared for. Still the pens, like the
pins, do at last disappear. Whither? The
earth is not prickly with steel pens. It ought
to be; why isn't it?

What becomes of all the old gloves? (Our
present inquiries leave us too breathless to
make others as to the new gloves.) Old gloves
are among the old things whose fate is hidden
in the densest obscurity of all. Think of the
numbers of old gloves that are cast off, and
of the few old gloves that one sees about in
the world. Where are they all? Where—if I
may be allowed to introduce a personal matter
—where are my old gloves? There are one or
two pairs, dirty and open at the seams, lurking
about in my drawers. There is, in my medicine
cupboard, a bottle of sal-volatile, and one
of essence of peppermint, respectively covered
on the stoppers, the one with a grey, and the
other with a yellow, kid glove, which, if they
had voices, might cry, with the lepers of old,
"Unclean! Unclean!" But what are these in
proportion to the vast numbers of my old
gloves? Where 'are the rest? Where, not to
confine this inquiry too much, are the old
gloves of my friends? Where are the old
gloves of my enemies? Where are the old
gloves of those who are neither my friends nor
my enemies? Where are the old gloves of
all mankind?

It is a difficult question to solve, this. A
glove is a tough and uncompromising customer
to deal with. We cannot conceive of him as
dissolved into a pulp, and made paper of; nor
can we imagine a thousand or so of him
interdigitated and sewn together to make a
patchwork quilt. Yet some function or other
must be fulfilled by these old servants, and
when their career at balls, at concerts, at
opera celebrations, at garden parties, at
horticultural shows, at weddings, at funerals, is
brought to a close, there must be something
still in store for them. For, if it were otherwise,
and they were simply left to kick about the
world unheeded, it could not be but that we
should continually meet old gloves in society,
or, retiring into the wilderness to meditate,
should find them flying before the wind, like
the sands of the desert.

The question what becomes of the old
boots and shoes, is not quite so hard of solution.
They are worn longer, and reduced to
a much more abject condition of wreck