but also in
each department of nature. Among forests it symbolizes the immemorial
incense cedars and redwoods of the Yosemite; among shores, those of
Capri and Monterey; among mountains, the glowing one called Isis as
seen at dawn from the depths of the Grand Canon.

II

Next, I collected postage-stamps. I know that it is customary to-day
for writers to sneer at this pursuit. But surely they have forgotten
its variety and subtlety; its demand on the imagination; how it makes
history and geography live, and initiates one painlessly into the
mysteries of the currency of all nations. Then what a tonic it is for
the memory! Only think of the implications of the annual
price-catalogue! Soon after the issue of this work, every collector
worthy the name has almost unconsciously filed away in his mind the
current market values of thousands of stamps. And he can tell you
offhand, not only their worth in the normal perforated and canceled
condition, but also how their values vary if they are uncanceled,
unperforated, embossed, rouletted, surcharged with all manner of
initials, printed by mistake with the king standing on his head, or
water-marked anything from a horn of plenty to the seven lean kine of
Egypt. This feat of memory is, moreover, no hardship at all, for the
enthusiasm of the normal stamp-collector is so potent that its
proprietor has only to stand by and let it do all the work.

We often hear that the wealthy do not enjoy their possessions. This
depends entirely upon the wealthy. That some of them enjoy their
treasures giddily, madly, my own experience proves. For, as youthful
stamp-collectors went in those days, I was a philatelic magnate. By
inheritance, by the ceaseless and passionate trading of duplicates, by
rummaging in every available attic, by correspondence with a wide
circle of foreign missionaries, and by delivering up my whole
allowance, to the dealers, I had amassed a collection of several
thousand varieties. Among these were such gems as all of the
triangular Cape of Good Hopes, almost all of the early Persians, and
our own spectacular issue of 1869 unused, including the one on which
the silk-stockinged fathers are signing the Declaration of
Independence. Such possessions as these I well-nigh worshiped.

Even to-day, after having collected no stamps for a generation, the
chance sight of an "approval sheet," with its paper-hinged reminders
of every land, gives me a curious sensation. There visit