MEN MAGPIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19149, 15 October 1925, Page 16

MEN MAGPIES.

One bright- spot exists just now for a man whose home is choking in the murky dust of its annual spring cleaning. The flood of activity that is thundering through his house is sure to throw up the wreckage of a score of useless trifles long forgotten, and the rediscovery of them will bring him the comfort of old friendships renewed. It is curious—this masculine delight in reviewing hoarded rubbish. It began in childhood, when the boy came home from school and found again the treasures laid aside at the beginning of the term —the catapult, the burning-glass, or the pneumatic plate-lifter. Can we not all remember how they came out of the drawer with all their old glamour? So in later life there is a distinct thrill when the spring cleaning process disgorges a camera or a stamp * album —anything down to pocket books, silver match boxes and petrel lighters. Men, a.as, are incurable sentimentalists, and hate to part with anything that has been theirs for long. Broken pipes, old letter.i, even old boots can recall for us a past mood or past emotion, and are thus retained once they have managed to lie about long enough. To women, who arc tidy by instinct, they are rubbish, and the sooner they go to the dustbin the better. There is one word in Latin which means "a picker-up-of-unconsidered-trifles." The fact that it is a masculine word and no feminine use of it has been found shows that m; a have changed little, since Caesar's day. riercin lies the explanation of the dilatorines.s of so many men in applying for their war medals. So often it was one's womenfolk who insisted on their being claimed, seeing in them the practical evidence of meritorious deeds, the just recognition of service. But to many men they meant nothing, for at that time medals had no direct, associations. Rut now that the memory of the war > is fading to a single, frightful incident, I medals are becoming as cherished as the cracked bowl of one's first pipe, and woe to the average housewife who would dare suggest putting them tidily away with the photographs in the box-room." To man the hoarder, spring cleaning is an anxious tune; out if he can get home early enough , very evening to inspect what his wife has thrown out it has its compensations,.