That is my difficulty. For a bachelor in chambers who cannot bury, there should be some other consuming element than fire. In the winter I might possibly have burnt it is small quantities--Monday the head, Tuesday the watch-chain--but in the summer what does one do with it? And what does one do with the thousands of other things which have had their day--the old magazines, letters, papers, collars, chair legs, broken cups? You may say that, with the co-operation of my housekeeper, a firmer line could be adopted towards some of them. Perhaps so; but, alas! she is a willing accessory to my weakness. I fancy that once, a long time ago, she must have thrown away a priceless MS. in an old waistcoat; now she takes no risks with either. In principle it is a virtue; in practice I think I would chance it. It is a big cupboard; you wouldn't find many rooms in London with a cupboard like that; and it is included in the fixtures. Yet in the ordinary way, I suppose, I could not go on putting things in for ever. One day, however, I discovered that a family of mice had heard of it too. At first I was horrified. Then I saw that it was all for the best; they might help me to get rid of things. In a week they had eaten three pages of a nautical almanac; interesting pages which would be of real help to a married man at sea who wished to find the latitude by means of two fixed stars, but which, to a bachelor on the fourth floor, were valueless. The housekeeper missed the point. She went so far as to buy me an extremely patent mousetrap. It was a silly trap, because none of the mice knew how to work it, although I baited it once with a cold poached egg. It is not for us to say what our humbler brethren should like and dislike; we can only discover by trial and error. It occurred to me that, if they _did_ like cold poached eggs, I should be able to keep on good terms with them, for I generally had one over of a morning. However, it turned out that they preferred a vegetable diet--almanacs and such.... The cupboard is nearly full. I don't usually open it to visitors, but perhaps you would care to look inside for a moment? That was once a top-hat. What do you do with your old top-hats? Ah, yes, but then I only have a housekeeper here at present.... That is a really good pair of boots, only it's too small.... All that paper over there? Manuscript.... Well, you see it _might_ be valuable one day.... Broken batting glove. Brown paper--I always keep brown paper, it's useful if you're sending off a parcel. _Daily Mail_ war map. Paint-pot--doesn't belong to me really, but it was left behind, and I got tired of kicking it over. Old letters--all the same handwriting, bills probably....