Two Kinds of People Who Lose Things

    There are two kinds of people who lose things: those who leave them in the place, go away and never know it—instead of being sorry for them and ultimately assimilating or throwing away their leavings, I suppose I ought to report the loss to the police. And for those who say they have left things and haven’t I can’t be sorry. But the other day I mixed the two kinds myself. Coming in from a walk I met on the steps a nice woman who had called for a hat that a friend said he had left behind. Not seeing any on the hooks, and Bessie denying that any hat had been left in a bedroom, I was rather irritated by her certainty, evident even through her politeness, of its being here, and I sent her off. But as soon as she was out of sight I found the hat on my head.

John Fothergill, An Innkeeper’s Diary (London: Chatto and Windus, 1934), pp. 278-79.