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On Matches
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (February 24, 1912) : 21
Purdue copy/scan (hathitrust) : link
archive.org : link
 

      Is it oneself and all one’s friends alone who, by a curious coincidence, cannot cow matches into staying in places where they may afterward be found; or is it that one is not more unfortunate than the rest of the world and that matches dominate everywhere? Housekeepers of system and determined men with frayed patience have both tackled the problem of disciplining matches, and they have both been vanquished. Dreadful little boxes with “Matches” stamped on the front have been fastened to the wall in every room in the house, perhaps with the hope that they might attract matches, but with a result which is a humiliation to human beings and another victory for matches. The boxes are always to be found on the wall, and the deluding, taunting label remains clearly visible; but there are never any matches in the boxes and nothing will induce matches once put in to stay there until the next time one comes. The more appliances there are for keeping matches the more laborious is one’s life, for the unhappy fumbling is but continued the longer and that moment postponed when one goes out into the hall and, lifting up one’s voice in an angry, baffled wail, cries, “Has any one seen the matches?”
      Of course no one answers, because no one cares. Matches are things you always have to settle for yourself. Besides, you did not answer when they last called out. Every one is accustomed to hearing other people railing against matches. It is one of the ordinary sounds in the house, and from long custom it hardly interrupts one’s reading. Even if any one did know where the matches were they would not tell. Even if any one did know where the matches were they would not tell. They hear you bumping around and they pause in their occupation just long enough to hope fervently that you do not find the matches that they secreted behind the clock. If you do not, they breathe freely; if you do, they accept it as the fortune of war, and see if they can tell by the sounds you make where you are hiding the same box. Matches are perfectly permissible loot. They do not in reality belong to any one, and so, if any one tries to preserve them to himself, it is almost a matter of honor to attempt a robbing of his hiding-place before you descend to the pantry and get them from an inaccessible third shelf, muttering as you go, “It’s a very queer thing — of all the houses this is the most —” And on and on, until you have made yourself into an extremely disagreeable person, when, if the matches had only been where they should have been, your disposition might have been saved.
      Every one has theories about keeping matches. Their scarcity is generally attributed to the bad management of some one else. But that is just part of the havoc that matches can play in the most amiably minded families. Some think that if a large quantity of matches were bought there would surely be a few boxes left when the necessary disappearance had taken place. a wonderfully sinuous sentence; might regard batteries, ca 2026, or USB adapters.But, going into the thing mathematically... But, going into the thing mathematically, it is seen that, counting the number of things to be lighted, the possible heads that pop off, the draughts that blow out other matches, the members of the family who secrete matches in their bedrooms and will not permit of their being searched for taking all these on one side and adding a generous margin for understatement, there remains, when this is deducted from the gigantic number of boxes bought, a mystifying number that no one can account for. There is but one conclusion to come to. Matches go off by themselves and never come back. It can be proved by the empty boxes they leave behind them. Every one has had the experience of pouncing joyously on a box only to find it empty, and, on his crying out in his disappointment, some one always exclaims, “Well, it’s very queer; I put a full box there this morning.” On inquiry it has been found that people who live in one room have precisely the same troubles. Matches disappear when the occupants of the room have not once left it, and this where the corners are so few as to permit of complete searching. It is very queer. That is all that one can say: It is very, very queer. Here we are boasting constantly of our civilization and yet incapable of explaining this problem which touches us all so intimately.
 

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