is but a hobby--but a paragraph in one chapter of the vast, but most
agreeable, history of human folly. If John Doe is blankly indifferent
to Richard Roe's Elizabethan dramatists, it is only fair to remember
how sublime is Richard's contempt for John's collection of old musical
instruments. If these gentlemen are wise they will discuss, when they
meet, the weather, or the Death Duties, or some other extraneous
subject, and leave their respective hobbies in the stable. Never mind
what your hobby is--books, prints, drawings, china, scarabaei,
lepidoptera--keep it to yourself and for those like-minded with you.
Sweet indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse
which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and
distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless
indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and
stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur
as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a
secret sin--the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer
madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, and
Harry to inspect your stable: such conduct is to invite rebuff, to
expose yourself to just animadversion. Keep the beast in its box. This
is my first advice to the hobby-hunter.

My second piece of advice is equally important, particularly at the
present time, when the world is too much with us, and it is
this--never convert a taste into a trade. The moment you become a
tradesman you cease to be a hobbyist. When the love of money comes in
at the window the love of books runs out at the door. There has been
of late years a good deal of sham book-collecting. The morals of the
Stock Exchange have corrupted even the library. Sordid souls have been
induced by wily second-hand booksellers to buy books for no other
reason than because the price demanded was a high one. This is the