en, neither did older folk make those quaint scrap
books with such assortments of literary and pictorial odds and ends
solely for the amusement of their visitors. Many enthusiastic collectors
stored their treasures in such books, the binding of which was often
very costly and quite gorgeously ornamented. Some pointed with pride to
collections of prints, others to albums of frontispieces, printers'
marks, and tailpieces, some of which were beautiful little pictures.

In modern times collectors rescue from the flames old tickets, pictorial
benefit tickets, theatre passes, and quaint pictures which tell us of
great events which happened in days gone by at Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and
other places.

Ranelagh, where the entertainments of which relics in the shape of
beautifully engraved tickets are to be found, was at Chelsea, and the
gardens visited by Walpole, Johnson, and Goldsmith were famous for their
promenades and for the music and singing which might be enjoyed, among
the evening pleasures being displays of fireworks and masked dances. In
the summer tea and coffee were sipped under the trees, and there were
water carnivals on the river. There were also masquerade balls and
dances, for which tickets engraved by Bartolozzi and other famous
artists were issued. It is these tickets which are preserved and
collected now.

The autograph hunter extends his hobby by adding old parchments and
deeds with seals, for among the odd bundles of parchments in old
libraries are many documents attested with thumb-marks and seals--"His
mark," of days when many of the landed proprietors could not write their
own names.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--ANCIENT CLOG ALMANAC.]

The joys of St. Valentine's Day, remembered by older people still, are
unknown to the present generation, but collectors perpetuate February
14th as it was kept in the past by filling albums with such old
valentines as they may be able to secure.

Watch Papers.

Another comparatively small collection can be made up of pictorial watch
papers, those rare little pictorial views which once reposed in the
interior of the cases of old watches. Watches are by no means common
curios of the household, but now and then an old silver verge or a
decorated watch case thought little of is found to contain one of those
pretty pictures which were chiefly engraved and printed in the
eighteenth century. Many of the designs were printed on satin; some were
devices in needlework; again