INVOLUNTARY BAILEES.


Lord Tennyson is probably the most extensive Involuntary Bailee at
present living. The term "Involuntary Bailee" may or may not be a
correct piece of legal terminology; at all events, it sounds very
imposing, and can be easily explained.

An Involuntary Bailee is a person to whom people (generally unknown to
him) send things which he does not wish to receive, but which they are
anxious to have returned. Most of us in our humble way are or have been
Involuntary Bailees. When some one you meet at dinner recommends to your
notice a book (generally of verse), and kindly insists on sending it to
you next day by post as a loan, you are an Involuntary Bailee. You have
the wretched book in your possession; no inducement would make you read
it, and to pack it up and send it back again requires a piece of string,
energy, brown paper, and stamps enough to defray the postage. Now,
surely no casual acquaintance or neighbour for an hour at a dinner-party
has any right thus to make demands on a man's energy, money, time, brown
paper, string, and other capital and commodities.

If the book be sent as a present, the crime is less black, though still
very culpable. You need take no notice of the present, whereby you
probably offend the author for life, and thus get rid of him anyhow.
Commonly, he is a minor poet, and sends you his tragedy on John Huss; or
he is a writer on mythological subjects, and is anxious to weary you with
a theory that Jack the Giant Killer was Julius Caesar. At the worst, you
can toss his gift into the waste-paper basket, or sell it for fourpence