writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't
think of anything clever and original--at least, not at this moment.
The only thing I can think about now is being hard up. I suppose
having my hands in my pockets has made me think about this. I always
do sit with my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of
my sisters, my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy--I
should say expostulate so eloquently upon the subject--that I have to
give in and take them out--my hands I mean. The chorus to their
objections is that it is not gentlemanly. I am hanged if I can see
why. I could understand its not being considered gentlemanly to put
your hands in other people's pockets (especially by the other people),
but how, O ye sticklers for what looks this and what looks that, can
putting his hands in his own pockets make a man less gentle? Perhaps
you are right, though. Now I come to think of it, I have heard some
people grumble most savagely when doing it. But they were mostly old
gentlemen. We young fellows, as a rule, are never quite at ease
unless we have our hands in our pockets. We are awkward and shifty.
We are like what a music-hall Lion Comique would be without his
opera-hat, if such a thing can be imagined. But let us put our hands
in our trousers pockets, and let there be some small change in the
right-hand one and a bunch of keys in the left, and we will face a
female post-office clerk.

It is a little difficult to know what to do with your bands, even in
your pockets, when there is nothing else there. Years ago, when my
whole capital would occasionally come down to "what in town the people
call a bob," I would recklessly spend a penny of it, merely for the
sake of having the change, all in coppers, to jingle. You don't feel
nearly so hard up with eleven pence in your pocket as you do with a
shilling. Had I been "La-di-da," that impecunious youth about whom we