IN QUEST OF RAVENS 35 



There we have the shrewd collector's se- 

 cret. Whatever the objects of his choice, 

 postage-stamps, first editions, butterflies, or 

 match-boxes, they become for the time 

 being the only objects worthy of a man's de- 

 sire ; but in talking about them, as of course 

 he cannot altogether avoid doing, he keeps 

 in mind the old caution about the pearls and 

 the swine, and veils his seriousness under a 

 happy lightness of speech. This is the better 

 course for all concerned ; and something like 

 this is the course I mean to adopt in narrat- 

 ing my raven-hunt amid the North Carolina 

 mountains, in May, 1896. The work was 

 absorbing enough in the doing, but at this 

 distance, and out of consideration for the 

 scholarly reader, who may feel about ra- 

 vens as M. Bonnard felt about match-boxes, 

 I hope to be able to treat it with a be- 

 coming degree of disinterestedness. 



My collecting, be it said in parenthesis, 

 was in one respect quite unlike M. Bonnard's 

 and Mme. Trepof's. It was concerned, not 

 with the objects themselves, but with the 

 sight of them. I wanted, not cured bird- 

 skins in a cabinet, but bits of first-hand 

 knowledge in the memory and the notebook. 



