A Little Boy and His Museum.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 43, 28 July 1933, Page 5

A Little Boy and His Museum.

Many years ago there lived in England a little boy of 10 who went about looking for strange things. He never took a country walk without keeping his eyes open for anything unusual, curiously shaped stones, fossilized shells, pieces of flint that might in some bygone age have been used by prehistoric people. Anything of this nature found its way into his pocket, to be added later to other treasures which he kept in a number of boxes stored away in his bedroom.

As time went on more and more boxes were required until his father, seeing he was getting together a l'eally interesting collection of curios, gave him in an old cottage standing behind the house a room of his own in which to keep it. Here, for 14 years, he spent his spare time sorting the treasures he found into groups, and labelling them just as they do in big museums. Many friends visited the cottage, and at last it happened that he was asked to lend his little museum to start an official one for the town.

But things did not end there. The big museum in Peterborough was no sooner formed than it, too, went on growing and growing, and as it expanded it had to keep moving into fresh quarters. When the boy grew up he became the honorary curator and secretary of the museum, for no one knew as much about it as he did, and three years ago he was rewarded for his lifework by hearing that a magnificent building had been presented to the society for its use.

But Mr. Bodger for that is his name—did not, in the excitement of it all, forget the interest he took in curios when he was a little boy, and so arranged for a special corner to be kept in the museum as a Children’s Room. Here all kinds of interesting toys are shown. When little Master Bodger put his first curiously shaped stone into his pocket, he little thought what a wonderful thing was going to grow out of it.