Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off.

But if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon.

If the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that memorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happened in that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it.  It would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with enough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to try stealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like.

The same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feeling ashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do it again.  He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash drawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the United States.

At all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe is that either America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowd in the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would not be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden flash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man’s leg—­if he picked it up and—­did not put it in the box.

The crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was a stew of development, a huge laboratory of people.  All stages of experience were in it.

Some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought, when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody.  They thought they would try and see what stealing a penny was like.  Then they did it.

Others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they had still another thought.  They thought of not stealing it.  And this second thought interested them more.

Others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought of it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing it.

Others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed they were of having thought of it.  Others looked thoughtfully at the pennies and thought they would wait for guineas.

But whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd that day—­they all thought.

And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in it—­any chance crowd in a street in it should think.  I confess I care very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about the brewer’s little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular crowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through.  Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or invention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility in them, it was a crowd to be proud of.  And I am glad, for one, that the box of pennies was dumped in the street.