The man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told it because he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about human nature. He thought he ought to encourage me.
I will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion.
I think it would have been better to have had just a few of those pennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing.
On Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would have been missing—I hope.
And I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand.
There are two ways to get relief from this story.
First, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he would have thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies between him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dear little foundlings got them—the letter in the Times said. They were presented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand.
Second, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with a sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the Times and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in the Times to come out at the other.
Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off.