READER, does your mind ever run back to the time when you were in receipt of a regular allowance, when you could be described almost as a ‘person of independent means’? The other day I mused in this vein, and fell to thinking of the day before yesterday, when I was a chubby, pudding-fed lad, and the aforesaid allowance amounted to four shillings and fourpence at the end of a year, but was delivered into my hands at the rate of one penny per week. Saturday morning was the appointed time, I believe. Of course, I often received other and larger sums; aunts and uncles were usually good for half-a-crown, or even more, and grandfathers in those days seemed to be literally made of silver coin. But the Saturday penny differed from these occasional presents in that it was my very own; there were no hints of money-boxes and savings-banks and ‘rainy-days’; the penny was placed in my hand, and could be used immediately as a sacrifice on the glittering altar of Juvenile Folly. This was very much to my taste, for, like most healthy children, I scorned those doubtful deities, Thrift and Prudence; even now I can hardly bring myself to accord them the worship which is, from what I hear, their due.

A number of my playmates received their weekly pennies at the same time—almost at the same moment, I imagine—and it was our invariable custom to retire in a body to a little shop near by. It was a tiny fancy-goods and sweet shop, whose owner must have subsisted almost entirely on the patronage of such small fry as ourselves. To us, as we clustered round the window, it was a veritable land of Heart’s Delight, for a penny was a potent talisman in those days, and we had the choice of a bewildering array of entirely useless articles. (What do children receive on Saturday mornings these times, I wonder; a ten shilling note or a War Bond?). So, clutching our pennies in warm, moist little hands, we would spend a delicious half-hour gazing through the shop window, a round-eyed, shrill-voiced crowd of speculators, until, after much discussion, our minds made up, we would clatter—one by one—into the shop and come out triumphantly hugging our purchases. The rest was a swift descent into prosaic life. The great moment had come and gone.

Now, sympathetic reader, I will discover to you the depths of my folly. For you must know that some poetic rogue, some Autolycus of the fancy-goods trade, had invented and placed upon the market the thing called the lucky-bag. It was my bane, and the cause of my weekly undoing. Never was there such a snare for an imaginative child! It was a large, sealed paper-packet, bulging auspiciously; it contained articles of great variety, and some, so ran the legend on the cover, were of ‘immense value.’ Here was wealth, touched with chance and mystery and magic; here was El Dorado within sight. When I add that the price of this marvel was exactly one penny, there is nothing more to be said.

At first we were all victims. But, alas!—nothing of ‘immense value’ was forth-coming. The packets contained nothing of more importance than some trivial little wooden article, and a few contemptible pink sweets—a vile pennyworth! The bulging, which gave one the idea that the bag was crammed with bulky toys, was caused, I regret to say, by a sheet of stiff brown paper artfully disposed beneath the outer covering. So my companions, worldly wise in their generation, laughed to scorn the wiles of the lucky-bag merchant, and betook themselves to other and more solid purchases—a top, a ball, or a pennyworth of bulls-eyes or toffee. Here they receive a pennyworth for a penny and were satisfied.

It was otherwise with me. I wanted the land of Heart’s Delight for a penny, and though I have never got it, there were moments when, holding the newly-bought, unopened bag in my hand, I had glimpses of joys beyond mere pennyworths of this and that. Week after week, month after month, the lure of the magic packet held me in thrall. There were times when I would resolve to break my bonds, and traffic no more with the cheater, the mocker of sweet innocence, but it was all to no purpose; as soon as I approached the fateful shop and caught sight of the bulging packets my resolutions went like smoke, and once again my penny would be swept into the till, and once more I would stand, with heart beating high, looking into the mysterious bag.

And always the same hollow mockery; always the stiff brown paper bringing my dreams to earth. My collection of little wooden egg-cups and tables grew apace; often I nearly made myself sick by trying to find some consolation in the abominable pink sweets. My elders laughed at me, and I was the scorn of my youthful playmates. Yet I think those pennies were well expended, for I moved, unknowingly, in great company—among the happy simpletons on the one hand and the fantastic dreamers on the other. Don Quixote, Parson Adams, Pickwick, and the rest at one elbow; Lully, Paracelsus, and all the other seekers of Philosophers’ Stones, Elixirs of Life, and Lands of Gold jostling me on the other side.

So I was in my innocence, and even now when I am ‘if a man speak truly, little better than one of the wicked,’ I have not changed so much. Though the pennies do not come so easily as of old, the dreams have not yet faded, the magical lights have not yet been quite extinguished; the solid pennyworths still fail to satisfy me, who have been on the very frontiers of El Dorado. So, though the disappointments still come thick and fast, I have my moments, perhaps you, too——?

But I fear my name will never head a subscription list or cause a commotion in Lombard Street. I sometimes think I shall never even be asked to open a bazaar.