explained. Like many other oddities and puzzling features in the ways of
collectors, the high price of certain stamps is the consequence of the
passion for perfection. Any one can collect stamps--little boys and
schoolgirls often do. But there comes a point at which foreign stamps
and old stamps grow rare, and more rare, and, finally, next to impossible
to procure. Here it is that the heart of the mature collector begins to
beat. He is determined to have a perfect collection. Nothing shall
escape him in the way of printed franks on letters. Now,
nineteen-twentieths of his assortment he can buy in the gross, without
trouble or great expense; but the last twentieth demands personal care
and attention, and the hunting up of old family letters, and the haunting
of great dealers' shops, and peeping through dirty windows in shady lanes
and alleys. As he gets nearer and nearer a complete collection the spoil
grows more and more shy, the excitement faster and more furious, till,
finally, the amateur would sell an estate for a square inch of paper, and
turn large England to a little stamp, if he had the opportunity. The
fury of the pastime is caused by the presence of definite limits. There
is only a certain known number of stamps in the world. This limit makes
perfection possible.

It is not as if you were collecting really beautiful things like Tanagra
terra-cottas, or really rare and quaint and mysterious things like aggery
beads. Though Tanagra terra-cottas, and aggery beads, and fine examples
of Moorish lustre, or of ancient Nankin, or of gold coins of the Roman
Empire, are all rare, yet there is no definite limit to their number.
More may turn up any day when the pickaxe breaks into a new Tanagra
cemetery, when a fallen palm in Ashanti brings up aggery beads clinging
to its earthy roots, when a pot of coins is found by some old Roman way,
and so forth. To be sure, perfection may be attained in coin collecting,
when a man has specimens of all known sorts, but even then he will pine