"Oh, I shall never find it in this forest of umbrellas!" cried a girl. "Never! I don't think I want to. I hate the look of umbrellas." Another woman picked her umbrella out in the first five minutes. What an eye! And all the time girls came up to the counter, rather breathless, with: "I've lost a lovely new umbrella on a number three omnibus; it had a dear little green handle carved like a fish, and I said to mother----" "Come inside, miss," said a weary official. "I said to mother that I think I lost it when I got off at Westminster, or it may have been earlier in the morning, when----" "Come inside, miss!" More remarkable even than the jungle of lost umbrellas is the series of rooms packed with every conceivable thing a passenger can carry in a tramcar, an omnibus, or a taxicab. You gain the impression when you tour the Lost Property Office that some people would lose an elephant between Ludgate Circus and Charing Cross. How do they lose full-size typewriters, gigantic suit-cases packed with clothes, gramophones, bulky parcels, crates, and small perambulators? There are thousands of lost shoes, mostly new, some of them dance slippers bought by forgetful girls, or perhaps by husbands who were thinking of something else! There are ball dresses that have been left in omnibuses, silk nightdresses, hats, costumes, and, of course, jewellery. The Lost Property Office looks like a gigantic pawnshop or a large secondhand store. The officials are surprised at nothing. Have they not taken care of skulls and the hands of mummies? In another room I saw October's crop of lost umbrellas being distributed to the tramcar conductors, the omnibus conductors, and the taxicab men who found them. This happens every three months. If it did not Scotland Yard would have to build an annexe somewhere. The finders made merry as they were given incongruous umbrellas. One large, red taxicab driver drew a neat little mincing silk umbrella with a kingfisher on the handle. "Oh, how sweet, Bill!" said the tram conductors. * * * At the other end of the office other conductors were handing in dozens of umbrellas and sticks, the ceaseless daily harvest of London's wonderful absent-mindedness. Most of them had wrist straps, too! The "Girls" Even as I write Piccadilly is changing. Eros, attended by the ghosts of undergraduates, has stepped from the pinnacle, thus evacuating the post of honour from which he has gazed upon the follies of our fathers, those wicked men who used to wait outside stage doors with bouquets before sneaking off somewhere to dine with a real actress. Ah, those must have been good days....