It is not till he
has acquired several other pieces that he ceases to regard them as
mere items in the decoration of his room, and gives them a little
table, or a tray of a cabinet, all to themselves. How well they look
there! How they intensify one another! He really must get some one to
give him that little pedestalled Cupid which he saw yesterday in
Wardour Street. Thus awakes in him, quite gradually, the spirit of the
collector. Or take the case of one whose collection is not of
beautiful things, but of autobiographic symbols: take the case of the
glutton. He will have pocketed many menus before it occurs to him to
arrange them in an album. Even so, it was not until a fair number of
labels had been pasted on my hat-box that I saw them as souvenirs, and
determined that in future my hat-box should always travel with me and
so commemorate my every darling escape.
In the path of every collector are strewn obstacles of one kind or
another; which, to overleap, is part of the fun. As a collector of
labels I had my pleasant difficulties. On any much-belabelled piece of
baggage the porter always pastes the new label over that which looks
most recent; else the thing might miss its destination. Now, paste
dries before the end of the briefest journey; and one of my canons was
that, though two labels might overlap, none must efface the
inscription of another.
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