THE GREAT MATCH-BOX MYSTERY
PART ONE
I wonder—has any one ever made a psychoanalytical study of the habits of the Match-box family?
By Match-box family I mean the yellow and black, self-sufficient variety that arrive from the grocer in packages of a dozen and are at once torn apart and distributed (like kittens or missionaries) to every point of the compass.
Each box has its own special territory, and there it should stand, ready to the last match for any sudden emergency, such as the re-animation of the just-gone-out pipe, or the finding of the eyeglasses in the dark that their owner may be able to read the time on his radium-faced wrist-watch, or a thousand and one things.
There are indeed a thousand and one good and sufficient reasons (apart from its being its plain duty) why a match-box should always be on the job, and like the thousand and one cures for rheumatism not one of them (unless it be a horse-chestnut in the pocket) can be relied upon to work.
I sometimes think “a thousand and one” must be an unlucky number.