of collectors for
years, and so are probably nearly all sifted out of the great
rubbish-heaps of dealers; the latter have not been in great demand, and
may be unearthed in odd corners of country shops and all sorts of likely
and unlikely places. Therefore, as a hobby, it offers an exciting quest
with almost certain success in the end; in short, it offers the ideal
conditions for collecting as a pastime, provided you can muster
sufficient interest in the subject to become absorbed in its pursuit. So
large is it that, even to limit one's quest to books with coloured
pictures would yet require a good many years' hunting to secure a decent
"bag." Another tempting point is that prices at present are mostly
nominal, not because the quarry is plentiful, but because the demand is
not recognised by the general bookseller. Of course, books in good
condition, with unannotated pages, are rare; and some series--Felix
Summerley's, for example--which owe their chief interest to the "get-up"
of the volume considered as a whole, would be scarce worth possessing if
"rebound" or deprived of their covers. Still, always provided the game
attracts him, the hobby-horseman has fair chances, and is inspired by
motives hardly less noble than those which distinguish the pursuit of
bookplates (_ex libris_), postage-stamps and other objects which have
attracted men to devote not only their leisure and their spare cash, but
often their whole energy and nearly all their resources. Societies, with
all the pomp of officials, and members proudly arranging detached
letters of the alphabet after their names, exist for discussing hobbies
not more important. Speaking as an interested but not infatuated
collector, it seems as if the mere gathering together of rarities of
this sort would soon become as tedious as the amassing of dull armorial
_ex libris_, or sorting infinitely subtle varieties of postage-stamps.
But seeing the intense passion such things arouse in their devotees, the
fact that among children's books there are not a few of real intrinsic
interest, ought not to make the hobby less attractive; except that,
speaking generally, your true collector seems to despise every quality
except rarity (which implies market value ultimately, if for the moment
there are not enough rival collectors to have started a "boom" in
prices). Yet all these "snappers up of unconsidered trifles" help to
gather together material which may prove in time to be not without va