and sympathy. He told it something like this:
My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He
reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy.
In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my
servants–my chamberlain and my valet–to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens
of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one
whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you
too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I
reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the
heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic
taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making
collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and
in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of
sympathy with this exquisite employment.
I wrote and told him of one gentleman’s vast collection of shells;
another’s noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another’s elevating and
refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another’s priceless
collection of old china; another’s enchanting collection of postage-
stamps–and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle
began to look about for something to make a collection of. You may know,
perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon became a raging
fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his great pork
business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into
a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and he spared it
not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which filled five
large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of cow-bells that
ever had been contrived, save one. That one–an antique, and the only
specimen extant–was possessed by another collector. My uncle offered
enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you
know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches no value to
a collection that is not complete. His great heart breaks, he sells his
hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied.
Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and
intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his
great heart broke again; he sold out his soul’s idol to the retired
brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and
other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the
factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as
himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales–another
failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed
at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec
inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all
former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble
gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the
inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of
such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather
part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his
darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned
white as snow in a single night.
Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill
him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other
man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered
the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.
“Of what?” said I.
Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated
four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a
thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his