On Finishing Collector

I

As some wise man has said, ‘The price of growth is always to outgrow.’ And the price is not exorbitant. For often outgrowth is far more pleasurable than any stage of the growth it pays for.

The growths for which I have paid outgrowth are many indeed, and their number is increasing every day.

As a rule, the man who says, ‘I am willing to try anything once,’ smiles fatuously, as if getting off a witticism or a slang phrase. But I think that experimental willingness has always been found in a certain type of human nature. It is more than curiosity or interest — it is an avid enjoyment of an adventure into the unknown, and a will to accept good or bad results with equanimity.

When I was a child, I was told that to chew a bit of the green leaf of the calla lily would produce most dire and horrible effects on one’s tongue and lips. My trial of this experiment was only delayed by the difficulty of finding a leaf. When I did get it, I found the half had not been told me of the awful torture and agony that follow its mastication! I outgrew that habit immediately!

Similarly, when I heard that if you touched your tongue to any piece of cold iron, out of doors, in winter, it would stick to it, I tried it. It did.

And only last week I saw for the first time the wonderful material known as dry snow. A printed caution

on the ice-cream container advised me not to handle the stuff. But I did, and promptly concluded never to handle it again.

It may be that these impulses are hereditary. For I remember my little old grandmother, when she listened, enthralled, to a description of a ‘live wire,’ and was told how its deathdealing powers were instantaneous, said, with shining eyes and a tentatively poked-out forefinger, ‘But I’d like to just touch it and see!’

However, it is this spirit of daring inquiry that has brought about most of our modern progress and is responsible for much growth that has paid for itself by outgrowth.

As a small child the word ‘collection’ had no other meaning for me than the offering taken up at the Sunday church services. My parents had no flair for ‘collecting,’ as the term is used to-day, and we children had no encouragement to bring into the house anything that came under the general head of ‘clutter.’ Until my young brother arrived at the age when collecting birds’ eggs is inevitable. Of course the boy could bring in clutter, for ours was a ‘my son and the girls’ household, so brother’s room was soon swarming with branches of trees holding birds’ nests and boxes of eggs or eggshells in cotton wool. These things achieved the distinguishing title of a ‘c’lection,’ and were looked upon with awe and admiration by the girls.

Later the boy collected stamps and then coins, but it was tacitly understood that ‘collecting’ was a masculine verb.

And then I fell in with an entrancing game of cards called ‘Authors.’ From these I learned that a man whom I called ‘Hug’ Miller had written books entitled The Old Red Sandstone, The Testimony of the Rocks, and suchlike strange wordings. And, soon after, geology came into my school curriculum, and I too was moved to ‘collect.’ ‘ Specimens,’ mine were grandiloquently dubbed, and I can see now, in memory, my display of mineral products, labeled neatly ‘Quartz,’ ‘Mica,’ ‘Iron Pyrites,’ and such rare gems of geological formation. But they turned out to be clutter, and anyway I soon tired of them.

It was ever my nature to have short, sharp, finished episodes. My life was like beads on a string, and not matched pearls, either. Every pursuit was hounded to its lair and then forgotten. Scrapbooks delighted me, but I must needs hurry to get all the blank pages filled and the book set up on a shelf, there to rest in oblivion.

All my life my chief bane and chief blessing have been my impulse to finish. To sit up till all hours to finish reading a story; to work overtime to finish my stint; to overeat to finish a pie or a pudding. Always the feat of finishing anything begun was my chief end and aim, and my greatest source of satisfaction.

Never did I possess what is known as the sense of moderation. Indefatigable, tireless, desperate effort to achieve, to finish, to lay aside — such was always my pleasure. Not entirely an admirable trait, yet it has stood me in good stead in the battle of life, even though it has, at times, landed me in trouble.

Then came the day when, for the first time, I saw a small book entitled Grandma’s Attic Treasures. I devoured it in a few moments, and presto! I was a collector! I knew now what collecting meant, and with my usual energy I set to work. I had a grandma, she had an attic, and it was not long before I was the proud possessor of the family treasures.

Of course I was deemed queer, but that adjective was so often applied to me that it had lost all stigma. And mine was the beautiful mahogany sideboard, with its matching bureau, secretary, wardrobe — all with the darting flames in the door panels that I have never seen equaled and that are still among my chief delights. Mine the prismed girandoles, the gilded and flower-painted parlor bellows, the white and gilt china Victoria and Albert on horseback, the silver candlesticks and snuffer tray — all the real old stuff, which had been in the family for generations.

Objections were raised here and there. One superb chair was denied me because on it, in the attic, hung the sidesaddle that an old aunt used when a girl, and that ‘never had hung anywhere else’; likewise a chest of drawers, which had always held shirtwaists — and always must.

But I had it at last — the collector’s craze; the real thing.

My sense of moderation still being entirely lacking, I set to work in my home town, and, as ransacking was then in its infancy, I accumulated enough old and valuable mahogany to last me the rest of my life, and it is still lasting. Having no ‘Collector’s Guide’ to aid me, I scorned all woods but mahogany; and a round tip-table, off which my great-grandparents dined on their wedding day, was discarded by me because, forsooth, it was of cherry! To complete the tale of my ignorant desecration, I painted it black, with a shiny lacquered finish, and on that painted a huge spray of wild roses. Then I gave the table away.

About that time I began, not to collect, but to acquire books. I therefore desired great and spacious bookcases. Being told by wiseacres that these were not obtainable among antiques, I merely nodded my young head, and silently determined to ‘show ’em!’ I did. In a few months I had eight enormous bookcases that reached from floor to ceiling, all of the most beautiful old mahogany, with more or less paned glass doors. One I found, its two parts widely separated, in an old chicken house on an abandoned farm near my home. One I bought at a sale of discarded furniture from the Treasury Department in Washington. Two I succeeded in persuading a Fifth Avenue jeweler to part with, advising him his wares would show off better in modern showcases. One I saw advertised at Tottenville, as the heirloom of a German baron. And one came from the estate of some friends in New England, where it had been in the family since 1758.

By this time I was thoroughly bitten by the collecting microbe, but, though I then lived in a large house in New Jersey, the mahogany I accumulated threatened to crowd out the garnet embossed plush furniture with black and gilt frames that was my mother’s pride, so I perforce turned my energies to smaller articles.

II

The attic treasure hunt everywhere was increasing in size and volume, and, naturally enough, old china came next; but, as my microbe had the swiftmoving efficiency of a Bandersnatch, I soon had all the willow-pattern pieces and even a millennium plate. However, being balked by the refusal of a cousin to sell me the pink lustre tea set that had been our grandmother’s, — and which is still in a barrel in her cellar! —

I gave over china and turned to fresh fields.

Souvenir spoons held me for a moment, but when I found I could buy them of most places in a New York shop I just purchased a few dozens, and put them on a top cupboard shelf, where they remain to this day.

With intent to make me save instead of spend, my father presented me with a fascinating cylinder of nickel, which was a receptacle for dimes, and could be emptied only when filled to the amount of five dollars. I collected a few straggling dimes in it, and then, having a present of a few dollars, I went to the bank, exchanged the bills for dimes, and filled my little nickel cylinder, thereby liberating the lot.

Feeling that collecting, so far, had left me strangely cold, I concluded it was because I had tried only hackneyed lines. I decided to branch out, and went in for Japanese crystal balls. But finding them impossible, because the big ones cost many thousand dollars and I did n’t care much for the little ones, I tried miniatures — with similar results!

Determined to be original, I instituted a hunt for jade cubes. No, I had never seen any, but they must exist. About that time I made my first trip to Europe, and an obliging gentleman in Bond Street cut for me several jade cubes, and very beautiful they are. But they palled, and nobody knew what they were, anyway.

Silver toys came next. I saw a friend buy what she called a ‘museum piece’ — a tiny chariot and horses of exquisite silver work. Such toys I gathered, and then, as an auction sale of small silver boxes and toys, collected by a connoisseur, came up, I bought the lot, and that was that.

Cardcases drew my attention. I achieved them in silver, carved ivory, tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl, glass, and other beautiful materials — but cui bono? Dolls of all nations accumulated so rapidly that they had to be given away at last.

Regretfully I came to the conclusion that I was not a true collector. I was an achiever, an acquirer, an accumulator, but a born collector — no!

I listened to the talk of my collecting friends. They would tell at length of a search and a final find of some marvelous bit of antique furniture or ornament that they had discovered after months of strenuous hunting. Idiots! Why did n’t they go to a reputable antique dealer and buy it at once? I bethought me of that true and beautiful stanza by Gelett Burgess: —

A PRAYER

In spirit, there is nothing truer or more beautiful, but it seems to me too big a principle to apply to a tour of New England tea rooms and antique shops to hunt a rising-sun bedquilt. Yet I gathered from their conversation that the fun was in hunting for the bedquilt far more than in getting it, and again I realized that there was something the matter with my collection complex.

Then early American glass came to the fore. Glass is beautiful in and of itself, and it seemed a likely thing to stalk. But my decision to collect it was met by shouts of derision from the knowing ones.

‘You’re too late,’ they cried, exultantly, ‘it’s all been bought up — that is, all the real stuff. You’ll get fooled with fakes!’

As the one thing I really pride myself on is not getting fooled by fakes, I determined to show ’em!

It chanced that I spent that summer in New England and in the western part of Pennsylvania. In New England, over almost the entire length and breadth of which I motored, I learned just about all there was to know on the subject of the early glass products of this land of the free and home of the brave. And it was an absorbing and fascinating study. I don’t begrudge an hour I spent or a dollar I spent in getting letter-perfect. I polished off by a study of the old glass in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then I started on my visit to a friend whose country house is perched atop the Alleghenies. I confided to her my intention of hunting glass in the vicinity, and, interested at once, she put herself, her car, her one-hundred-per-cent efficient chauffeur, and the whole of Somerset County at my disposal.

Blithely we started off, not knowing where to go, but trusting to the kindly aid of Fate and Luck. Nor did they fail us. By some occult power, or some superhuman flair, Mack, the chauffeur, knew from the way the smoke curled out of a chimney, or the way a silo was built, which farmhouses held bits of early American glass.

No chance for faking here. No modern stuff, ‘planted’ for visiting collectors, in these old and primitive homesteads. The Pennsylvania Dutch have lived in their homes for generations, and their household gods are the wedding presents of their ancestors, or of their neighbors’ ancestors, sold out in case of need. For as a rule they are poor, and there is little of value in their houses, except now and then an antique.

Nor could we have done much without Mack. Himself a native, he knew how to talk to the farmers’ wives and daughters. More, he had an ingratiating way with him that allowed him to go right past the women and sidle into their very pantries, from which he emerged with his arms full of dusty glass he had hauled down from top shelves.

‘My land!’ the owner would cry out. ‘I ain’t seen them old things for years! Can’t be you want to buy them! ’

And Mack, with a wink at me, would set out on the kitchen table gems of three-section mould pitchers, tumblers, and sugar bowls; amber-colored celery glasses and spoon-holders; covered butter dishes, and, finest of all, covered cracker jars and sweetmeat jars and compotes, most beautiful for to see. Early cut glass, made long before the era of pressed glass. Wonderful plates and goblets, twin sauce dishes, mugs and platters, each of intrinsic beauty as well as historic interest.

The owners were loath to sell, yet greatly did they desire my ready cash. And with Mack’s intuitive understanding of just the right brand of argument to use they usually capitulated.

Mack is not the chap’s real name. That is short for Machiavelli, and expresses, in part, his type and his methods of procedure.

Sometimes we drew a blank. At one house I said, tentatively, ’I wonder if you’ve any old pieces of glass you’d be willing to part with?’

‘What?’ said the lady of the house, looking bewildered.

‘Old glass,’I went on. ‘You know, old pieces you’ve discarded — thrown away — old pitchers, plates, bowls — ’

‘Well,’ she said, musingly, ‘I did have some, but I threw ’em out last week.’

‘ Where’d you throw ’em?’ asked Mack, confidingly.

‘Out back o’ the woodshed — mebbe they’re there now.’

But Mack was already out there and back, his hands full of small broken bits of glass, easily recognizable as the ten-cent-store variety.

‘These are n’t old!’ I cried, but she said, ‘No, not so very. But they was broke, so I pitched ’em out. You want ’em?’

‘No,’ I told her, and went on to the next house.

Only three days we motored over the mountain, and then, as in a more historic case, the mountain came to us. Before we were downstairs on the fourth day came a summons, and, descending, we found Mack holding at bay a horde of natives, each with arms full of newspaper-wrapped bundles and demanding to know, ‘Where is the lady who buys glass?’

This kept up for a week, or until I was forced to deny further admittance to the glass-hawkers. And it was all real, all genuine early American glass. Not Stiegel, save for a few pieces, but products of the other earliest factories, and many bits from England, Ireland, and France.

Nor were the prices abnormally low. The mountain people have small sense of relative value and at once assume fabulous worth if their belongings are coveted. Moreover, in many cases the money was pitifully needed. And another factor in the case was the quick-working jealousy of neighbors.

‘ Why, you gave Mrs. Remmensdyke twict as much as that for her pitcher, and this is bigger yet!’

No knowledge of moulds or pontil marks was theirs. Only to get more money than another was their end and aim.

Old bottles turned up, too, and we were repeatedly informed that ‘ General Taylor never surrenders,’ and learned that one Booz made the flasks destined to hold the beverage that is now known by his name, and were incidentally cheered by the acquisition of a lovely blue spirally waved bottle, indisputably Stiegel.

Well, I felt that I had enough to prove to my scoffing friends in the East that early American glass was not yet all bought up, and, on counting, I found I had over six hundred pieces! Crated and barreled, they were sent to New York and — sold at an auction room!

I had proved my point, I had ‘collected’ early American glass, and, having added to it the Sandwich and other varieties from New England, as well as a fine lot of Stiegel, for which I paid nearly its weight in gold, I sat back in my chair at the auction and listened to the bids, which brought me in rather more than half the sum I had paid out.

But collecting is not an inexpensive pursuit, and I felt the money and time were well expended. For had I not finished collecting early American glass, in something less than two months, and had I not the rest of my life now to devote to other matters? Now I can walk down Madison Avenue and shake my fist at the one-time tempting Millville glass balls and Waterford candlesticks in the windows of the antique shops. No more glass for me. I’ve had it!

Yet it left a trail in the shape of paperweights.

Millefiori! They had a lure, and I fell for them. Only real ones, of course — only the genuine early specimens. But I found many, and then one day I was at a house on Park Avenue where I found a friend with like tastes, but with even less sense of moderation than my own, for he had three thousand millefiori paperweights! He had every known variety, even the rare butterfly type, in abundance. He had specially constructed cabinets for them, heavily insured, because even the special constructions have a way of breaking down under the incredible weight of the things. They had overflowed the cabinets and were tucked in every drawer and cupboard, under his piles of shirts, in his shoes, and, his wife frowningly confided, under her hats!

That settled me. I never could get three thousand together, and I did n’t want them anyway. I had finished with them. Except, that is, the variety known as snowstorms. The kind that contain a ship at sea, or a little man with an umbrella. Then you turn them upside down and back again, and a miniature snowstorm whirls and flutters down.

They are fascinating things, but are now made in France. These modern ones, of course, are not desirable, and for many months I was most pleasantly unable to get any real ones. At last the daughter-in-law of a friend secured one for me, but when she was carrying it home under her arm, along an icy street, it fell to the ground and smashed. Two ordered from England arrived in a thousand pieces each. Some others, guaranteed old, proved to be modern.

But at last I did achieve several real and beautiful ones. One of them shows a nun kneeling before a wayside shrine to the Virgin, and when the snowstorm is set going and descends on the nun’s bowed head the Two Orphans have to hide theirs.

So, having these, I’m through with collecting snowstorms.

III

Well, there were other things I flew at, but all brought only the same result — vanity and vexation of spirit. I pondered over the matter, as is my wont when puzzled, and I came to the conclusion that my collected objects were unintellectual.

’Collect books,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re by way of being literary — make a literary collection.’

Then I beamed, for surely I was at last on the right track in my pursuit of happiness. Books it should be, and, as I always like to get advice from a proper authority, I went to see my friend, Miss Belle Green, of the Morgan Library. She gave me the best sort of counsel and information, and also some book dealers’ and auction catalogues, which, as they were the first I had ever read, held my attention far, far into the night.

Books, of course, but where to begin?

I soon learned that Kilmarnock Burnses, and Paradise Losts with the right title-page, were not for me. But first editions of shining though lesser lights might be attained, and, of course, autographed copies.

Presuming on my more or less true and tried friendship with various writers, I made myself a public nuisance by sending them copies of their books with requests for inscriptions. It was amazing the way they responded, and returned the books delightfully inscribed, without an outward or visible sign of the annoyance the pestering requests must have given them!

And a few times I asked for inscriptions from people I did n’t know at all. This I freely admit is a base thing to do. But I was prodded to it by friends who took delight in saying, ‘Bet you can’t get Kipling to autograph a book for you!’ ’Or Joseph Conrad! ’

Well, thus dared, I did get autographed copies from the two mentioned and many other great authors, but l have the grace to be thoroughly ashamed of such proceedings and have long since mended that error of my ways. However, I knew personally a sufficient number of authors to make my inscribed books a goodly collection, including a complete set of Oliver Herford’s works, with his adorable kittens rollicking over the flyleaf of every volume.

But my indefatigable zeal put this sort of thing over quickly, and I tound myself with every inscribed book that I wanted.

First editions and association copies, of course, awaited collectors. I achieved them of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, W. S. Gilbert — as well as more seriousminded writers. But they left me cold. Perhaps a First Folio Shakespeare or a Gutenberg Bible might give me a thrill, but nothing less can do it.

I studied carefully the psychology of book collecting and the character of the collectors. First of all I discovered that there is nothing literary about it, and nothing erudite. One need not be a scholar to collect books. Indeed, I’ve never known a scholar who did collect them. One need not be a great reader, or, in fact, a reader at all. For the value of collectible books bears no relation whatever to the matter of the volume, but merely to its manner. A first edition or a rare copy is the same text as that in a popular issue of the same book, but one is of large money value and the other is not.

Collected books are not read and are not meant to be read. The joy of a collector is showing off his books to other collectors, hoping to make them green with envy, or to noncollectors, to enjoy their perfunctory awe as he explains the value of the volumes. It is the body of the book and not the soul that makes it a collector’s item.

This is no disparagement of the procedure — it is only a comment on the rooted conviction most people have that book collecting presupposes literary ability or knowledge, when as a matter of fact it does nothing of the sort. But I had to collect books to find this out for myself, as I too said in my haste, ‘All book collectors are brainy people.’

And so it palled. First editions could be bought by anyone who had the price. The rarest volumes turned up now and then at auctions and were available if one had a purse equal to them.

And, worst of all, other collectors, to a man, refused to appreciate my books, and obstinately preferred to show off or talk about their own. My Moral Emblems of Stevenson’s was met with ‘Yes, I know. But I have a friend who knows a collector who has Kipling’s Echoes!' And my Allahabad stories of Kipling’s brought forth ‘Very nice. But I have Stevenson’s John Nicholson, with the paper cover.’

Of course he did n’t — or, if he did, it was in such poor condition as to be practically worthless. But the first duty of a collector is to cry down other persons’ books.

However, I stuck to it. I collected books until the whole game was a squeezed orange, a burst bubble. Of course I collected with both hands. The books fairly snowed in, and occasionally I must needs weed out a lot to send to the auction room. And I finished — finished book collecting in all its phases. Now I buy what books I want or need, whether old or new, first editions or last ones, and goodness knows they are numerous enough! But I no longer buy books as a collector.

Collectors loftily declare that they never consider the money value of a book. It hurts them terribly to have the subject referred to. Yet most of the collector’s pet stories are about how he found a first Gray’s Elegy in the sixpenny box of a street stall, or an early Poe in a secondhand dealer’s ten-cent trough.

When books began to take up more room than I could conveniently spare for them, I turned me to miniature books. They are fascinating little things to collect. Exquisite bindings and marvelous workmanship — some of them less than an inch in size. Of course I must needs attain the smallest book in the world, among my other tiny books, and did so — Galileo’s Letter, less than half an inch either way. But, that achieved, the climax was reached, and I promptly forgot all about miniature books.

Then, by chance, it was said in my hearing that Walt Whitman was a fine author to collect, but that it was now too late to get his most desirable editions, as they had all been avidly bought up by the Whitman collectors. Like a war horse scenting the battle, I inquired further particulars.

‘You can’t get any Whitman now,’ I was told. ‘It’s too late to begin.’ So, of course, I began.

As a poet or as a prose writer, Whitman was far from being one of my favorites. In fact, he seems to me a conceited old egoist, and if that is tautological, it is also true. But if he was a good one to collect, and if it was impossible to collect him now, he was my meat!

So I set to work, in my own way. And my way was the simple process of writing to every book dealer I could learn of, in America and England, and even in Canada and Australia, and asking for quotations.

A very dear friend, and one greatly experienced in collecting, said: —

‘My dear Carolyn, you’re going about it all wrong! You not only can’t get anything in that way, but you ’ll send the prices of what they may have skyoodling up out of sight! That’s no way to collect! You can’t sit there at your desk and whistle for books to come to you. You must go out and browse around, secretly, stealthily, and then you’ll chance upon marvelous finds!’

‘Yes?’ I said, and smiled, and went on in my own way.

Well, my own way answered my purpose so well that inside of a year I was possessed of the largest collection of Whitman in the world. Not only did I have all the editions, and all the variants of every edition, but I had many unique copies, and quantities of manuscript, letters, and all the association items dear to a collector’s soul.

Few noncollectors know of all the various editions of Whitman’s one book, Leaves of Grass, but there are hundreds of them. Then a book of his, called Letters to His Mother, was printed in an edition of only five copies. Two of these are in the Library of Congress. But by dint of search and research I achieved the other three.

At last I had every possible edition or special copy of Whitman, except one exceedingly rare item, the first edition, 1855, bound in paper. Only two were known, and these two were beyond any hope of achievement. I really despaired of this, as it seemed absolutely unobtainable, and paper covers are so perishable that there was small chance of finding the thing.

And then I did! I learned of a copy for sale, and I bought it, with the dire result of finding my Whitman collection complete, and therefore of no possible further interest. It stands before me as I write this — an enormous, tall bookcase filled to overflowing with the only complete collection of Whitman known, and yet cui bono?

No, I am not a born collector. My price for growth is always to outgrow. An incomplete collection is a thorn in my flesh and a complete collection is a bore.

I sought to divert and amuse my friends by telling them that the only thing I wanted now was one of Whitman’s neckties. Kindly souls, with my own indefatigability of pursuit, endeavored to get this for me. They hunted so seriously, and so earnestly, that I’ve never had the heart to tell them that, even as the happy man had no shirt, so Whitman never wore a necktie!

One ardent Whitman collector has a lock of his hair. But it seems to me messy. And, too, hair is an expensive item to collect. A few years ago a lock of Poe’s hair brought many hundreds of dollars at an auction, and nine hairs of Sir Walter Scott brought even more. In this day of bobbed hair one ought to get a lock from the head of a favorite authoress fairly cheaply, but the masculine hair is doubtless as expensive as ever.

I also collected caricatures of Whitman, and they are screamingly funny; but collectors of Whitman, naturally, have no sense of humor, and they deem the caricatures — some the work of famous artists — sacrilegious.

Moreover, though there are five hundred Whitman collectors in the United States, I know only two of them personally, and though those two are appreciative, it is not a large audience.

IV

You see, a collector is an exhibitionist. If you can’t show off, your collection is dust and ashes.

I came to realize the words of the Preacher: —

‘So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. . . . For this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit. . . . Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.’

Surely Ecclesiastes understood.

Vanity is the keynote of the collector’s soul, and vexation of spirit is its undertone. A collector may have gray matter, and he may have wisdom, just as he may have red hair or blue eyes, but none of these things is either cause or effect of his collecting complex. The basic requirements are acquisitiveness and love of display. Taste and discrimination are not only unnecessary but rather a drawback. You get those from the catalogues and price lists.

The wise collect quality, the foolish collect quantity. I have done both and I know whereof I speak.

I am now collecting collections. It is amazing to think of the various things that have been and are being collected. Indeed, it is almost safe to say there is nothing that has not been collected.

One friend of mine collects only picture postcards and crown jewels. He has three hundred and fifty thousand of the former, and a somewhat smaller number of the latter. Another collects knots of wood. He has an enormous lot of these, and is continually sending to Arizona or Timbuctoo for some rare knot. A patriotic gentleman collects flags, and boasts an American flag, with at least twentyfour stars, that he gravely declares was carried during the war of 1776!

Carved fruit pits, carved whale and shark teeth, are collected by others. Many incline to old theatre programmes, playing cards, and old newspapers. Samplers, laces, finger rings, antique weapons, fans, and cameos are among the pursuits of the cultured ones, while Rogers Groups and patchwork bedquilts appeal to sturdier souls.

One dear woman, otherwise sane, is collecting a million used postage stamps, ‘to save a Chinese baby.’ When I said, ‘Why save the Chinese baby?’ she was as much at a loss for a reply as she was to know how, when, or where the salvation was to be accomplished.

A well-known collector has a gorgeous collection of bandboxes and bird cages, than which perhaps nothing could be more cumbersome, even though interesting. Bibles are collectible, and I have heard of collections of actresses’ slipper heels and poets’ suspender buttons, of race horses’ shoes and of canes.

These collectors I mention are all bona fide seekers and very much in earnest. They prowl and search with unflagging zeal, and enjoy the chase far more than the quarry, the race far more than the laurel.

This is as it should be; but all things have I seen in the days of my vanity, as Ecclesiastes puts it, and from my observation of others I have come to know that I am not a collector. An acquirer, an achiever, a go-getter — but a collector, no.

For those who have the esurient complex, the Bruce’s spider obsession, who prefer the doing to the deed, the striving to the accomplishment, collecting is a joy and a happiness. To me, after long experience, it seems the Idiot’s Delight.