A STRANGE HOBBY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19024, 26 May 1936, Page 15

A STRANGE HOBBY

“CENTENARIAN” CLIPPINGS COLLECTED BY AM ERICAN WORLD EXCHANGES .MADE After a correspondence lasting several months, a Wanganui man iia.s unearthed a rare hobby. He lias discovered' that a friend in New Jersey. America, collects clippings about centenarians, and that, to his knowledge there are only six other known, collectors in the world. Perusal of a- bundle of letters belli by Mr. (.!. Sutherland, Wanganui East, showed Hint Mr. William P. Norris, ol 11 addonlield. New Jersey, collects insects. cancelled postage stamps, postmarks. tram tickets, milk bottle tops, matchboxes, articles on stamp-collecting and snakes, so that he may exchange them for ‘‘centenarian” clippings.

In one letter, Mr. Norris says he began "cutting out, tilings” which interested him before lie was old enough to vote, and that was before the SpunisliA iiicricim War. (hie day. while running over his collection—this was in 189 d—lie noticed lie had several clippings about- centenarians, in which he tlioi i and there decided to specialise-

"As not, many people live to be ICO years old.” lie writes in a later lei ter. ''naturally newspaper clippings about them are very scarce. 1 would be tickchl to death to find a centenarian scrap-booker in New Zealand.'' SOME SURPRISING CENTENARIANS. Looking through other letters, it was found that in the 37 years Mr. Morris has been “riding bis hobby,” he has clipped over 170 dill'erent newspapers to obtain the necessary articles, which number 4600 —all reputable centenarians. He spends about 25 cents, a week on his hobby. .Just recently lie sent a dozen dried Japanese beetles to an English collector and received in ret,urn a score of clippings about, an English centenarian. The best, exchange he ever made was when he traded several Philadelphia theatre programmes of the gay nineties for 4GO clippings, most ot which were different.

It appears that not all the clippings announce tho death of some vulnerable greybeard, lie tells his Wanganui correspondent, that- some of his clippings reveal centenarians who referee prize fights, get- married and divorced, and even get arrested for drunkenness. One has actually flown ail aeroplane. and another walked 240 miles in six and a half days. Other stories iu his collection tell about- the first- centenarian, to sec a motion picture, the first to have an automobile ride, the first to have her bait- bobbed, and the first to swim 250 sards. The, latter was a woman.

The oldest centenarian in his collection is Zui'o A glia,, the Turk. Mr. Noriis lias this gentleman's thumb-print, as. it seems, although having, lived for that length of time, he has never learned to write. There is also a clipping about a Chinese who boasts that he is 2CO veal's old. but the collector does not put much reliance on this. “Possibly,” he writes, “this fellow has got. his birthday* mixed up with one of Ins ancestor s.