Gentle Art of Brain-Picking by Dr F W Boreham

An essay found in F W Boreham's desk but published in the Hobart Mercury on Saturday, October, 31, 1953.

No man may pick his neighbour’s locks; no man may pick his neighbour’s pockets, but any man may pick his neighbour’s brains. For between the locks and the pockets on the one hand, and the brains on the other, there is an essential and elemental and ethical difference. Brains, like peaches, are made to be picked; pockets are not. And, since the brains are made to be picked, they are, like the peaches, well worth the picking. Every man, however intellectually impecunious, carries among the convolutions of his brain a certain deposit of priceless treasure, gathered in the course of his distinctive and individual experience, of which it is the duty of others to relieve him.