surely so; I knew it all along!"

And so then if I tell you a thing you already know, I confer on you the
great blessing of introducing you to yourself and of giving you the
consciousness that you know.

And to know you know is power. And to feel the sense of power is to feel
a sense of oneness with the Source of Power.

Let's see--what was it, then, that we were talking about? Oh, yes!
collectors and collecting.

Men collect things because these things stir imagination and link them
with the people who once possessed and used these things. Thus, through
imagination, is the dead past made again to live and throb and pulse with
life. Man is not the lonely creature that those folks with bad digestions
sometimes try to have us believe.

We are brothers not only to all who live, but to all who have gone
before.

And so we collect the trifles that once were valuables for other men, and
by the possession of these trifles are we bounden to them. These things
stimulate imagination, stir the sympathies, and help us forget the
cramping bounds of time and space that so often hedge us close around.

The people near us may be sordid, stupid, mean; or more likely they are
weary and worn with the battle for mere food, shelter and raiment; or
they are depressed by that undefined brooding fear which civilization
exacts as payment for benefits forgot--so their better selves are
subdued.

But through fancy's flight we can pick our companions out of the company
of saints and sinners who have long turned to dust. I have the bookplates
of Holbein and Hogarth, and I have a book once owned by Rembrandt, and so
I do not say Holbein and Hogarth and Rembrandt were--I say they are.

And thus the collector confuses the glorious dead and the living in one
fairy company; and although he may detect varying degrees of excellence,
for none does he hold contempt, of none is he jealous, none does he envy.
From them he asks nothing, upon him they make no demands. In the
collector's cast of mind there is something very childlike and ingenuous.

My little girl has a small box of bright bits of silk thread that she
hoards very closely; then she possesses certain pieces of calico, nails,
curtain-rings, buttons, spools and fragments of china--all of which are
very dear to her heart. And why should they not be? For with them she
creates a fairy world, wherein are only joy, and peace, and harmony, and
light--quite an improvement on this! Yes, dearie,