my spine
echoes of the thrills that used to course it on similar occasions in
boyhood. These were the days when my stamps had formed for me mental
pictures--more or less accurate--of each country from Angola to
Zululand, its history, climate, scenery, inhabitants, and rulers. To
possess its rarest stamp was mysteriously connected in my mind with
being given the freedom of the land itself, and introduced with warm
recommendations to its _genius loci_.

Even old circulars issued by dealers, now long gone to stampless
climes, have power still to raise the ghost of the vanished glamour. I
prefer those of foreign dealers because their English has the quaint,
other-world atmosphere of what they dealt in. The other day I found in
an old scrapbook a circular from Vienna, which annihilated a score of
years with its very first words:

CLEARING

OF A LARGE PART OF MY RETAIL DEPOSITORY

Being lately so much engaged into my wholesale business ... I
have made up my mind to sell out a large post of my
retail-stamps at under-prices. They are rests of larger
collections containing for the most, only older marks and
not thrash possibly put together purposedly as they used to
be composed by the other dealers and containing therefore
mostly but worthless and useless nouveautes of Central
America.

Before continuing this persuasive flow, the dealer inserts a number of
testimonials like the following. He calls them:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sent package having surpassed my expectations I beg to remit
by to-days post-office-ordres Mk. 100. Kindly please send me
by return of post offered album wanted for retail sale.

G. B.--HANNOVER.

The dealer now comes to his peroration:

I beg to call the kind of attention of every buyer to the
fact of my selling all these packages and albums with my own
loss merely for clearings sake of my retail business and in
order to get rid of them as much and as soon as possible.
With 25-60 % abatement I give stamps and whole things to
societies against four weeks calculation.

All collectors are bound to oblige themselves by writing
contemporaneously with sending in the depository amount to
make calculation within a week as latest term.

It is enough! As I read, the old magic enfolds me, and I am seized
with longing to turn myself into a society of collectors and to
implore the altruistic dealer "kindly p