Judge — March 30, 1912 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

And So It Goes! THE SAD EXPERIENCE OF A CURIO COLLECTOR WHO WAS MISUNDERSTOOD. AY BEFORE yesterday I invited a half dozen high-grade connoisseurs out to my barn toa private exhibition of my world-renowned collection of old tin tobacco cans, and I expected to feed them—after the exhibition—on a colla- tion consisting of ham sandwiches and water; but I didn’t. I was so mad I chucked every ham sandwich out of the hay window into my neighbor's chicken yard, and I poured the water back in- to the pump. I tell you this —a man has to be prepared to be misunderstood if he is going to de- vote his life to a great work. Here I had devoted to beat the band, for years and years, and spent a whole lot of money —I dare say my col- jection has cost me all of four dol- lars and ten cents —and those other collectors just stood around and sneered. “Dickens and all!’ they said. “Why, you got us ‘out to this back. woods town of Flushing, Long Island, on the pre- tense that you had a wonderful col- lection of some kind! And what is it? Old tobacco tins!"’ “But look at this!’’ I said, in a trem- ulous voice. ‘*Maybe some of my tins are the sort you see every day; but look at this Old Snoozer Plug Cut can. There's a rarity! There's art! Look how the old thing’s bunged up and dented! If that don’t look rare and con- noisseurish, I don’t know what does!"’ “‘But, tomcods and tarpons!"’ said one of those collectors, ‘‘they’re nothing but old, no-account, secondhand, cast-off to- bacco tins! That's all they are or all they ever will be. What use in collect- Clubber— Chubber Nobody ever collected to ing them? bacco tins before. Well, sir, was mad! I just looked him right in the eye—spang in the eye! “*What the dickens oughta man to col- lect?”’ Lasked. ‘*Whatdo you collect?"’ “‘Back-number postage stamps!’’ he said, so proudly he had to lean up against the oat bin to keep from falling over backward. ‘‘I have the ding- MS i) — Wiget||| MIXED COMPANY. hear you stopped paying attention to Miss Shybird ?"’ ‘es; for the last three months I could see no one but her big brother and their bulldog."’ busted finest collection of ex-useful post- age stamps in this country."’ “Do tell!’’ I said scornfully. ‘‘And I guess I can see about how useful they are.’" “They show what countries there are in the world,’’ he said. ‘‘They show the advance in the art of postage stamp- ing. And everybody collects them.”” “Postage stamps are rot!’’ said an- other fellow there. ‘‘I'll admit that. But when aman collects Pompeiian tear do”’*—— jugs, like I “And what all-fired use are second- hand tear jugs?’’ I asked, for I was mad. “‘Well—well,’’ he said, ‘‘if I want to save some of my tears, I can weep into them."” “And, by golly!’ I said, ‘‘I guess I can weep into my old tobacco cans if I You get out of my barn, Just because I ain't collecting pie plates of the Ming dynasty like one of you, or false hair of the Louis Seize period like another of you, you have to run down my collection. I'l] let you know my tin cans are just want to, too. you old fossils! as useless and ri- diculous as what any of you collect, if not more so, and collecting them is just as childish a thing todo. I feel just as much like a fool when I stop to think of spend- ing good time over my collection as any of you can feel when you stop to think.’” “You goop!” said one of the hotheaded ones, “we can sell our second-hand post- age stamps and old junk, but no- body’d buy your old tobacco tins. There’s no market for them anywhere in the world.”’ “T got you there!’’ I said. ‘You feel proud because there’s a lot of idiots in the same collecting lines you are in; but I'm a bigger Now, get out of me—I stand all alone! idiot than any of you! I guess I rather had But that’s the way it goes! them there! Teacher— Archibald, what flourish in excessive heat?”” Archibald—Ice plants, plants comicbooks.com