Dear Jane,

I have lately come to the conclusion that there are certain problems in life which mankind has simply not the ingenuity to solve. We have managed to put men on the moon, construct bridges across enormous stretches of water, and devise machines capable of answering nearly any question one might think to ask. Yet no one, to my knowledge, has succeeded in producing a handbag of precisely the right size.

This is a remarkable failure of civilization.

The small handbag, of course, is a charming invention. It is neat, elegant, and gives its owner the pleasant impression that she is a woman of simple tastes who requires very little to conduct her affairs.

Unfortunately, this impression lasts only until she attempts to put something in it.

A purse, a telephone, a set of keys, and perhaps a lipstick will generally occupy the available space. Should she wish to carry a notebook, a packet of tissues, or some other extravagance, she must first decide which of her existing possessions she is prepared to abandon.

One might reasonably suppose that the answer is a larger handbag.

And so begins the trouble.

For the larger handbag, while admirably accommodating, possesses a most peculiar quality: the greater its capacity, the less accessible its contents become.

A woman may place her keys inside with perfect confidence, only to discover, three minutes later, that they have vanished into some remote and inaccessible region of the interior. She searches among receipts, spectacles, handkerchiefs, pens, and various articles whose presence she can neither explain nor justify.

The keys are eventually discovered beneath something she had entirely forgotten she owned.

By this time, she has missed the telephone call she was attempting to answer, which is unfortunate, as the telephone has now disappeared as well.

There are, naturally, handbags with compartments. These are advertised as the solution to the problem, and I have no doubt that they are designed by people of excellent intentions.

But compartments introduce difficulties of their own.

One must remember which compartment contains which article, a task that becomes increasingly complicated when one is in a hurry. The keys, which yesterday occupied the little pocket on the left, have somehow found their way into the zipped compartment on the right, where they remain until the entire handbag has been searched.

And then there is the matter of changing handbags.

This is a particularly hazardous undertaking, for no woman has ever transferred the contents of one handbag to another without leaving behind the single item she will most urgently require that day.

It is invariably the keys, the money, or the telephone.

Never the expired coupon.

Never the ancient receipt.

Never the mysterious object that has been traveling about in the bottom of her handbag for six months without anyone knowing what it is for.

Those always make the journey safely.

I have therefore begun to suspect that the perfect handbag does not exist, and that the search for it is merely one of those occupations by which women are kept perpetually hopeful.

We purchase a smaller handbag because we are tired of carrying so much.

We purchase a larger handbag because we are tired of carrying too little.

And somewhere between the two lies an imaginary handbag of exquisite proportions, containing everything we need and nothing we cannot find.

I fear it may remain imaginary.

In the meantime, I shall continue carrying whichever handbag happens to be least objectionable, while occasionally entertaining the foolish hope that the next one will finally settle the matter.

After all, a woman must have something to look forward to.

Yours, in perpetual search of the proper proportions,

P.