MY HOBBY.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17315, 29 November 1921, Page 10

MY HOBBY.

I am unsociable, I admit it. (writ** a stnmp collector in a London paper). My idea of a pleasant evening is not. good company and conversation, men in their onocdotage bore me. and tho affairs of the Commonwealth loave my withers unwrurig. For why? I collect postnge stamps. Givo mo a current catalogue, a pair of tweezers, a perforation gauge, and my looso-leaf album, and I ask nothing better than to be left alone to gloat over tho treasures I possess nnd scheme how to procure those I covet. My wants are few—the 2 cents Hawaiian "Missionary" stamp that fetched £3900 at the Ferrnry sale in Paris last June, a copy of the "Post Office" Mauritius, and flawless specimens of the errors in colour of the Capo of Good Hopo "wood-blocks." But as they are as unattainnblo as tho political ideals of a Communist T 'have to call philosophy to my aid, and, for the thousandth tune, fall into a miser's / reyerie oyer ,the Is purple Nova Scotia I acquired for a fraction of its value in a provincial curiosity shop. ; I was launched on my rnisnnthropio career in my far-away school days by a relative who gave me a family collection of the worth of which he knew nothing. The present initiated mo into.all the-vicissitudes that beset'tho collator.

I swopped a stamp with a schoolfollow, only bitterly to regTet tho transaction on reflection: the bulk of my. pocket-money went oh dealers' approval sheets, and, innocently forwarding a selection of rarities to a plausiblo individual who advertised wants that I was willing to supply at a price, I lost the wholo of them with no more satisfaction than could be derived from a subsequent newspaper statement that tho gentleman in question had been sentonced for fraud. But my infatuation was proof even against this drastic method of cure, and I developed into what I now nnv— a confirmed philatelist. Let no one who wishes to be contented start a stamp collection. Then* is no moment when ono can pause, ex-f claiming, "At last!" sit hack, and contemplate, carefully mounted nnd arranged, every 6hade and variety, used end mint, of the issues of one's chosen countries. Even the Tapling collection in the British Museum has its gaps. Even Baron Ferrary, tho sale of whose stamps by tho French Government is expected to roalisc £500,000, died unsatisfied. Finality is not for the philatelist. Moreover, picture the envy engendered at seeing in another's album tha very item searched for in vain, or to find it at a dealer's priced beyond one's means. The delight at chancing on an unexpected treasure while idly turning over the contents of a box of stamps displayed in the window of a small tobacconist for the custom of the boys of tho neighbourhood is only a fleeting anoydne for the former pangs. ~ . , Despite all this, I would not change my condition if I could. My rows of the Britannia type of Barbados and Trinidad, my plated penny blacks of Great Britain, my Newfoundland floral emblems and seals hold mo in thrall. I shnll continue to haunt the bywayn of the Strand and Holborn on the lookout for bargains, to overhaul the stock of second-hand curio dealers in places where I make holiday, to lose substance for shadow on my way through life. For lam too far advanced in tho malady of philately to hope for cure unlv in a land where no ono writes or potts letters can I look for peace