d
and excited the uninitiated. The ordinary individual, especially the
man who has no soul for a hobby of any kind, regards it as a passing
fancy, a harmless craze, a fashion that must have its day and
disappear, sooner or later. But the passing fancy has endured for
nearly half a century, the harmless craze still serves its useful
purpose, and the fashion has acquired such a permanence as to convince
most people that it has come to stay.

Of all pastimes, and of all the forms of recreation, not one can claim
more lifelong devotees than this same stamp collecting. And where is
another pastime with such international ramifications? In every
civilised country, in every city, and in every town of any importance,
the wide world over, thoughtful men and women are to be found formed
into sociable groups, or societies, quietly and pleasantly enjoying
themselves in the harmless and enduring pursuit of stamp collecting.

There must be some reason for this popularity, this devotion of all
classes to a pursuit, this unbroken record of progress. It cannot be
satisfactorily accounted for as a passing fancy or fashion. It has too
long stood the test of years to be so easily explained away. Fancies
and fashions come and go, but stamp collecting flourishes from decade
to decade. Princes and peers, merchants and members of Parliament,
solicitors and barristers, schoolboys and octogenarians, all follow
this postal Pied Piper of Hamelin,

"Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles,
cousins,"

all bent upon the pursuit of this pleasure-yielding hobby.

Why is it? Whence comes the fascination?

To the unprejudiced inquirer the reply is simple. To the leisured man
it affords a stimulating occupation, with a spice of competition; to
the busy professional man it yields the delight of a recreative
change; to the studious, an inexhaustible scope for profitable
research; to the old, the sociability of a pursuit popular with old
and young alike; to the young, a hobby prolific of novelty, and one,
moreover, that harmonises with school studies in historical and
geographical directions; to the money maker, an opening for occasional
speculation; and to all, a satisfying combination of a safe investment
and a pleasure-yielding study.

Old postage stamps--bits of paper, as they are contemptuously called
by some people--may have no intrinsic value, but they are,
nevertheless, rich in memories of history and of ar