for having been forgotten on any other supposition than that
the owners were travelling maniacs. One gentleman had left behind him a
pair of leathern hunting-breeches, a soldier had forgotten his knapsack,
a cripple his crutches! a Scotchman his bagpipes; but the most amazing
case of all was a church door! We do not jest, reader. It is a fact
that such an article was forgotten, or left or lost, on a railway, and,
more amazing still, it was never claimed, but after having been
advertised, and having lain in the lost goods office the appointed time,
it was sold by auction with other things. Many of the articles were
powerfully suggestive of definite ideas. One could not look upon those
delicate kid gloves without thinking of the young bride, whose agitated
soul was incapable of extending a thought to such trifles. That Mrs
Gamp-like umbrella raised to mental vision, as if by magic, the despair
of the stout elderly female who, arriving unexpectedly and all
unprepared at her journey's end, sought to collect her scattered
thoughts and belongings and launch herself out on the platform, in the
firm belief that a minute's delay would insure her being carried to
unknown regions far beyond her destination, and it was impossible to
look at that fur travelling-cap with ear-pieces cocked knowingly on a
sable muff, without thinking of the bland bald-headed old gentleman who
had worn it during a night journey, and had pulled it in all ways about
his head and over his eyes, and had crushed it into the cushions of his
carriage in a vain endeavour to sleep, and had let it fall off and
temporarily lost it and trod upon it and unintentionally sat upon it,
and had finally, in the great hurry of waking suddenly on arrival, and
in the intense joy of meeting with his blooming girls, flung it off,
seized his hat and bag and rug, left the carriage in a whirlwind of
greeting, forgot it altogether, and so lost it for ever.

"Nay, not lost," we hear some one saying; "he would surely call at the
lost-luggage office on discovering his loss and regain his property."

Probably he might, but certainly he would only act like many hundreds of
travellers if he were to leave his property there and never call for it
at all.

True, much that finds its way to the lost-luggage office is reclaimed
and restored, but it is a fact that the quantity never reclaimed is so
large on almost any railway that it forms sufficient to warrant an
annual sale by aucti