LES COLLECTIONNEURS

Thème.

Collectors are queer people. Sorne will collect books, engravings, or coins ; others will collect canes, keys, labels, or buttons ; but ail of them seem to give themselves body and soûl to their passion. The collector of autographs is, however, the most objectionable. He makes himself unpleasant to ail by troubling everybody in order to increase his collection.

Several good anecdotes are told of Alexandre Dumas, but the best one refers to the prince of Metternich, from whom the novelist got twenty-five bottles of excellent wine in exchange for his autograph.

A newspaper relates the story of M. de Malbos, who began to collect ail kinds of native woods when he had reached the old âge of seventy-seven. He succeeded in gathering about three hundred kinds, from which he had nine hundred canes made ; and when he died, he bequeathed his collection to the muséum of the city of Privas, where it can now be seen.