3o8 Notes oil Sport and Travel n 



idoon or imagery of trousers. The earlier and more 

 perfect savage, not having had, or having lost, the 

 only aboriginal pocket, the pouch of the strange 

 beast opossum, sticketh his knife and other cherished 

 articles behind his ear, or in a slit cut in that organ ; 

 a remembrance of which custom we may trace in the 

 clerks of London in our own day, who artfully 

 utilise the cartilage of their ears for the holding of 

 pens, which caused one wittily to say — 



♦ Before all things fear 

 Pen behind ear.' 



As to say, one who would take note and write down 

 whatever ear heard, to the scath of the speaker, for 

 as the grammar sayeth : — 



' Litera scripta manet.' 



As indeed they do, whereof cometh much damages 

 and breaches and woe to the unwary, eheu ! But 

 we were better to return to our hose. With the 

 stocking came the first purse. To this day travellers 

 of the baser sort, seeking eleemosynary lodging, are 

 wont to insert their money in their hose, feigning to 

 have none ; and the ancient Irish stuck his skean, 

 knife, or jockteleg, into his stocking, having nowhere 

 else to put it, unless he had bound it round his arm 

 in the Nubian manner. After the fashion of 

 aboriginals, however, he carried out the idea to 

 extremes, without thought of usefulness or regard to 

 tradition, and now he walketh about with not only 

 a knife in his stocking (not to draw in deadly peril. 



