But my collection was, first of all,
a private autobiography, a record of my scores of Fate; and thus
positively to falsify it would have been for me as impossible as
cheating at `Patience.' From that to which I would not add I hated to
subtract anything--even Ramsgate. After all, Ramsgate was not London;
to have been in it was a kind of score. Besides, it had restored me to
health. I had no right to rase it utterly.
But such tendresse was not my sole reason for sparing those two
letters. Already I was reaching that stage where the collector loves
his specimens not for their single sakes, but as units in the sum-
total. To every collector comes, at last, a time when he does but
value his collection--how shall I say?--collectively. He who goes in
for beautiful things begins, at last, to value his every acquisition
not for its beauty, but because it enhances the worth of the rest.
Likewise, he who goes in for autobiographic symbols begins, at last,
to care not for the symbolism of another event in his life, but for
the addition to the objects already there. He begins to value every
event less for its own sake than because it swells his collection.
Thus there came for me a time when I looked forward to a journey less
because it meant movement and change for myself than because it meant
another label for my hat-box.
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