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Chesterton: Soul of Schoolboy

The Soul of the Schoolboy--Uncle (Reverend) takes his nephew to see old silver coin. They empty pockets to enter museum.  Boy drops off magnet, string, junk.  A monk/magician enters with them. Colonel Morris is in charge of the place, a skeptic.  The boy, curious about a switch, plunges them all into darkness.  When the lights come back on--the coin is gone. The "thief" is Colonel Morris who used the darkness to test his theory that the silver coin was a fraud.  He used the boys magnet and string to fish the coin out of the display case, proving to himself that the coin was bogus--silver coated but iron, not silver, inside.  Clever

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