pocket of an old vest which hung on a hook in the closet of the young man's boarding-house bedroom. One day, the young man having moved away and carelessly left the old vest behind him, the box was taken out by the boarding-house keeper's husband, a mild-mannered gentleman who smoked a pipe outdoors, and he used nine more of the matches.
Between the unconscious selection of the normal matches by the owners of the box and the jostling which the thin match had received from the others, she found herself tucked away into a narrow corner where the thin wood of the box-bottom was edged by the still thinner paper pasted outside.
One day a companion of the boarding-house woman's husband asked him for a light, and, forgetting to return the box, this man became its new owner. He used only one match, though, and then left the box on top of one of his front gate-posts, where he had been talking to a neighbor, and little Sallie Eaton saw it there and picked it off on her way home from school. Sallie tucked it away in the pocket of her apron, where her mother found it when the apron was going to the wash, and Lance Eaton, Sallie's brother, found it on the sewing machine where his mother hadlaid it, and annexed it for himself.
THERE were thirty-seven matches in the box when Lance found it. There may have been some slight variation in the "average contents" when the box left the Emerald Match Company. It is certain that when Lance handed it through the car window in the railroad station to Big Pete Jenkins, there were only nine left and among these, quite tightly wedged by now into her corner, and out of sight, was the thin match.
The other eight were dead-set against her by now. They had no further contact with her; she was ostracized, a pariah of a match—too thin, and too brown on one side, and with a head too little symmetrical and too little apt to light at the first draw along the box-side for any self-respecting match to notice her at all!
Pete Jenkins went all the way to New York. By the time he arrived there were four of the nine left. The thin match was still in her corner, wedged in. It was better for her there, on the whole, she had come to believe. The pressure of the feeling against her had sent up strongly into her head the idea of her destiny. This was, of course, only the common destiny of all matches—to set something on fire. It might be anything, from a joss-stick to a great conflagration; but it was to start fire. That, she knew by instinct, was the great thing. What difference did it really make, she said over and over again to herself, that she was thin, had a crooked head, and a streak all down one side! There lay within her power the possibility of anything—anything, that is, that could come of setting something on fire. Patience! When it came her turn, if it ever did come, to be taken out and scraped along the side of the box, she must light, and blaze up, and burn clearly and steadily. She must not fail. And it would be so easy to fail! Many a match had failed, and for many reasons. There was the possibility of dampness, that greatest of all match-dreads. Then, the outside of the box would be sadly worn down by now, with most of the matches gone. The first out, those nearest to the top as fate at the hands of the packer adjusted it for them, always had the best chance. Then, too, she might break! She would be especially likely to break, being so very thin; or her paraffin-soaked neck, which was the thinnest part of her, might have got too dry to burn properly!
