is
that of not letting your left hand know what your right hand does. A
morally ambidextrous person may do what he pleases. He keeps the dealer
and collector apart, and subject to his will one or the other emerges.
The feat is too difficult for average humanity. In nearly every case a
prolonged struggle will end in favour of the commercial self. I have
followed the course of many collector-dealers, and I know very few
instances in which the collection has not averaged down to the level of a
shop--a fine shop, perhaps, but still a shop. I blame no man for
following the wide road, but I feel more kinship with him who walks
scrupulously in the narrow path of strict amateurism. Let me hasten to
add that there are times when everybody must sell. Collections must
periodically be weeded out; one may be hard up and sell his pictures as
another in similar case his horses; artists will naturally draw into
their studios beautiful objects which, occasion offering, they properly
sell. With these obvious exceptions the line is absolutely sharp. Did you
buy a thing to keep? Then you are an amateur, though later your
convenience or necessity dictates a sale. Did you buy it to sell? Then
you are a dealer.

The safety of the little collector lies in specialisation, and there,
too, lies his surest satisfaction. To have a well-defined specialty
immediately simplifies the quest. There are many places where one need
never go. Moreover, where nature has provided fair intelligence, one must
die very young in order not to die an expert. As I write I think of
D----, one of the last surviving philosophers. Born with the instincts of
a man of letters, he declined to give himself to the gentler pursuit
until he had made a little competence at the law. As he followed his
disinterested course of writing and travel, his enthusiasm centred upon
the antiquities of Greece and Rome. In the engraved gems of that time he
found a beautiful epitome of his favourite studies. For ten years study
and collecting have gone patiently hand in hand. He possesses some fifty
classical gems, many of the best Greek period, all rare and interesting
from material, subject, or workmanship, and he may have spent as many
dollars in the process, but I rather doubt it. He knows his subject as
well as he loves it. Naturally he is writing a book on intaglios, and it
will be a good one. Meanwhile, if the fancy takes him to visit the site
of the Bactrian Empire, he has only to put