16 
House & Garde 
U P 
I N 
THE 
ATTIC 
T HE collecting habit, like everything else, doubtless started with 
the cave man. One day he brought home a shell that caught his 
eye—a pretty shell of pinks and grays. He set it on a shelf in the 
cave and told the family that he’d brain 'em if they touched it. By 
and by he brought home another and then another until the shelf 
was full. On rainy days when he had nothing else to do, he scratched 
pictures on the shell, and he’d clout the wife and children if they 
joggled his arm while he was at his art work. 
In time, the cave proved inadequate because the women folks wanted 
a decent home to bring up the children in, and the family moved to 
the hut. The pink and gray shells were moved along with the babies 
and the bear skins and the gourd casseroles, and made quite a pretty 
showing in the new home. 
By and by the hut grew to a cottage and the cottage to a house with 
an upstairs and a down. Then the family began to have more than 
one suit of clothes, and a place had to he provided to keep the winter 
wardrobe. So an attic was built to the house and all the old things 
that weren’t needed, or had been broken or had outlasted their useful¬ 
ness were stored away there and forgotten. 
Then one day an adventurous soul with a sense of curiosity went 
up to the attic and rummaged around. Among the old things he found 
a heap of pink and gray, faded, dusty shells. There were pictures of 
deer and bear scratched on them. And he brought them downstairs 
and said, “Oh, look what I found up in the attic!” And he set them on 
a shelf by the window and told the children he’d thrash them within 
an inch of their lives with his yataghan if they dared touch them. 
And other men and women, seeing these shells, started rummaging 
in their attics and brought to light untold treasures of the past. And 
as they adorned their houses with them they began to think more kindly 
of their ancestors. 
That doubtless is the way collecting started. It begins in the ac¬ 
cumulation of ordinary day-to-day objects, it is enriched by discarding 
and forgetting these day-to-day things, and finally becomes popular 
by discovering them again. 
In the meantime they rest in the attics of the world awaiting their 
discoverers. Consequently, without 
attics collecting would be an impos¬ 
sibility—and so would many of the 
good things of this old world. 
And yet there are people who 
don’t believe in attics! 
A LL people, like Caesar’s Gaul, 
l are divided into three parts— 
those who consider an attic a dump, 
those who think it a treasure trove 
and those who don’t believe in attics 
at all. 
There is a certain group of peo¬ 
ple—and their numbers are growing 
-—-who believe that the best way to 
handle the difficulties of today is to 
shatter the world to bits and remake 
it closer to the heart’s desire. And 
they go about their work with mur¬ 
der and arson and pillage or ab¬ 
surd legislation. 
The Bolshevik mind has existed 
from the beginning of time, but be¬ 
cause it has been held in check some 
of the good things of the past are 
left to us to hand down to coming 
generations. In every chaotic situa¬ 
tion there has arisen some man who 
threatened to brain the race family 
if it touched his pretty shells. He 
wanted those shells for himself and 
his children when they grew old 
enough to appreciate them. The old 
Bolsheviki-—and the new—believe 
that no man has the right to inherit 
from a forebear or call anything his 
own. Should the Bolsheviki prevail 
today, decent men and women will 
have to give up the pleasant habit 
of collecting, and the attic would be¬ 
come as useless as adenoids. 
THE COLLECTOR 
Contrasting with this Bolshevik type are the other two. One main¬ 
tains a half-and-half attitude toward the past. They are eternally 
laying things on the table, discarding them to the attic of Time. They 
really don’t believe in the past; they merely cling to it because they 
aren’t quite sure which way the future will jump. 
The others—those who look on attics as treasure troves—believe that 
in the past lies the hope of mankind and its available future. Of the 
three groups this seems the most sensible. Old faiths, old lovers, old 
institutions are constantly being put up in the attic of the world there 
to gather dust and the fine patina that only age can give. But there is 
still much usefulness in them. There is still beauty to charm the eye 
and the romance of time to stimulate the imagination. A new age re¬ 
vives them. Men haul them forth. “Look what I have found up in 
the attic!” And they become popular again. 
T HERE is something about collecting that never entirely dies. Its 
heritage, stretching back to those pink and gray shells in the cave, 
may be dim at times, but it goes on and on, constantly being resurrected 
in one phase or another. For this reason men find it a source of con¬ 
stant refreshment. It keeps them young because it never grows old. Let 
it be bandboxes or bottles, stamps or Whistlers, Japanese prints or Co¬ 
lonial lamps, neither the acquiring nor the owning comprise the whole 
of collecting’s lure. It is this vast reaching back into the past that makes 
it so popular a hobby, this discovering things in the attics of yesterday. 
The past without men and women means nothing. Just so collecting 
without a comprehension of the men and women of the past means 
nothing. A chair five hundred years old is merely so much wood and 
leather, but a chair that men and women have used for five hundred 
years-—ah, there’s the secret! In days gone by men and women found 
these things useful and pleasing. That pictured bandbox tells of a 
bride’s heart aflutter. That consular ivory records the ancient form of 
political graft when Rome was young. This tankard’s handle is worn 
with the grip of men who drank heartily and needed no legislation to 
save their souls. This four-poster holds the secrets of life and death 
and the peaceful sleep of honest folk who laid them down in it. 
You cannot collect anything with¬ 
out having generations of ghosts 
looking over your shoulder. You 
cannot go into an attic without arous¬ 
ing the spirits of the past. Once you 
become a collector you join the in¬ 
numerable throng of those who have 
made and cherished these things, a 
throng hopeful that you will appreci¬ 
ate them, care for them and hand 
them on to other folks when your 
interest in them dies. 
Beware the Gimlet-eyed Collector 
Who haunts the Manse,—a Ghoul, a Spectre!— 
That, when the Aged Owner dies, 
He may achieve some Battered Prize! 
He craves some Highboy famed in Fable, 
A Warming-pan, a Gate-legged Table, 
A Chelsea Jug for Cream or Ale, 
Or Girandole by Chippendale. 
An Antiquarian Fanatic, 
He snoops about the Dusty Attic, 
And if he finds a Spinning Wheel, 
My Stars! you ought to hear him squeal! 
Oh, drier than a Latin Tutor, 
His Talk is all of Marks on Pewter 
And Sheffield Plate and Jackfield Ware, 
And what is Common, what is Rare. 
An Act Abolishing Collectors 
Would find, I take it, Few Objectors 
Except (one cannot well deny), 
The Folks from whom Collectors buy. 
—Arthur Guiterman. 
T HE people who don’t believe in 
attics—the Bolsheviki of all 
times—have a theory that an intangi¬ 
ble something called the State should 
own and control all possessions. 
During these next few years we shall 
see which will prevail—the intangi¬ 
ble State or the tangible person. It 
is a line-up between those who cher¬ 
ish the institutions of the past and 
an idea, between those who feel the 
innumerable throngs of yesterday 
and those who do not. 
In this arrangement of forces the 
collector must play his part. He 
must cease collecting for the sake of 
cornering the market in a certain col¬ 
lectable object, he must cease hiding 
away his possessions from public use 
and enjoyment. He must prove to 
the world that collecting is not a 
mere whim or fancy by which to 
spend his surplus cash, but that it 
stands for a belief in the good and 
beautiful things of the past, that it is 
as legitimate an amusement as see¬ 
ing baseball or playing golf, that it 
is as necessary to a full life as read¬ 
ing hooks or listening to music. 
