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, quite.

* * * * *

Ernest Meissonier, the artist, began collecting very early. He has told
us that he remembers, when five years of age, of going with his mother to
market and collecting rabbits' ears and feet, which he would take home,
and carefully nail up on the wall of the garret. And it may not be amiss
to explain here that the rabbit's foot as an object of superstitious
veneration has no real place outside of the United States of America, and
this only south of Mason and Dixon's line.