Burn Electricity or Coal 
in this Deane French Range 
At a turn of a switch you get instant 
heat—high, medium or low—as desired. 
With electricity you get cleanliness be¬ 
cause there is no soot or smoke to discolor 
cooking utensils or kitchen walls. You 
are assured of safety for matches and ex¬ 
plosive fuels are not used. You save time, 
for there is no waiting for a fire to reach 
a temperature suitable for cooking or 
baking. 
Deane’s 'french. Rande 
using electricity in combination with coal, is one 
that you will take pride in showing to your 
friends. The plain polished trimmings, the ab¬ 
sence of “fancy work” to catch dirt, the angle 
base that prevents refuse from gathering beneath 
the range and stray drafts from cooling the ovens 
—all these features, and more, are found in 
Deane’j' French Ranger. 
Consumption of fuel, be it electricity or coal, 
is held to a minimum. In fact, it has been said 
that the saving in fuel soon pays for the range. 
The range illustrated, built of Armco rust- 
resisting iron, is four feet, six inches long. The 
electric section at the left end has a large oven, 
a cooking top composed of four plates and a 
broiler in the double plate shelf. The coal burn¬ 
ing section has one oven, large surface space, and 
a fire chamber equipped with Universal grate and 
automatic dump to convey ashes directly into the 
cellar. The French hood draws cooking vapors 
through a ventilator into the flue and prevents 
them from circulating about the house. 
Ask your architect to specify Deane’s French 
Range, and send for “The Heart of the Home”, 
our portfolio of “tailor-made” residence ranges. 
Bmamhall, Co. 
263-265 West36*’^Sf..NewYork.N.Y. 
Mercury’s Print Collection 
{Continued from page 43) , 
at the first opportunity. Such are the 
“collectors” who pay no attention to 
the beauty of artistic stamps, who give 
no thought to their historic association, 
to whom the stories stamps tell, extend, 
indeed, no cultural allurements. 
Then there are those other “collec¬ 
tors” who are not collectors at all, but 
mere gatherers, who devote their leisure 
to accumulating and none of their time 
to the real appreciation of stamp lore. 
Still a third class gives ridiculous em¬ 
phasis to certain minutiae, such as a 
“study” of a stamp whose only merit 
appears to be its ugliness, its only virtue 
the fault of the mis-stroke of the en¬ 
graver's hand, an accident which gives 
it a differentiating dot, perhaps not to 
be found on its neighbor, but which, 
alas! warbles like a Lorelei to the one 
who listens to the sinister song of the 
craze of “variety for variety’s sake”. 
But leaving out the coldly com¬ 
mercial, the misguided, or the ridiculous 
(though permitting them the right to 
enjoy themselves to the calibre of their 
mental development) there are still 
thousands of stamp collectors who know 
what a rich field of enjoyment presents 
itself in the prospect surveyed by one 
who takes the trouble to enter the realm 
of sensible stamp collecting. 
Stamp Romance 
I need not here dilate on the educa¬ 
tional aid which stamp collecting cer¬ 
tainly advances. Certainly no class of 
collectors the world over is as con¬ 
versant with geography of the period 
from 1840 onward, with the outline of 
political world divisions, or with the 
succession of rulers of nations within 
the period mentioned, or moneys and 
exchange the world over. Of course, 
history exists independently of stamps; 
and so it does ■ independently of books, 
but both are records. 
Occasionally stamps have made his¬ 
tory, as when the misrepresentation of 
the boundaries of Haiti (as shown on 
one of the stamps of the Dominican 
Republic), nearly led to a war; and, 
again, as when Venezuela asserted her 
claim to the gold fields, as against Great 
Britain’s, by printing a map stamp of 
the region in which the boundaries were 
militantly set forth. 
The stamp collector will come to dis¬ 
cover that Lord Verulam (Francis Ba¬ 
con) is erroneously called “Lord Bacon” 
on a Newfoundland stamp, that the 
provincial postmaster-subjects of the 
late Czar Nicholas refused to cancel 
stamps of a commemorative Romanoff 
series bearing his portrait, as being con¬ 
trary to their traditions in regard to 
respecting the likeness of their “Little 
Father”, that Queen Victoria was great¬ 
ly displeased when Charles Connell, 
Postmaster-General of New Brunswick, 
issued a postage stamp bearing his own 
portrait instead of the Queen's, that an 
emergency postal issue of the Mafeking 
Siege decorated with a portrait of Gen¬ 
eral Sir Baden-Powell gave equal of¬ 
fence to her august majesty, that the 
very lovely postage stamps in a series 
issued by Portugal bear prayers on the 
backs of the stamps, that the water¬ 
mark of the stamps of the Soudan 
printed on paper having a cross-like 
rose outlined was changed to a crescent 
watermark because the Mohammedans 
refused to lick stamps with the rose 
cross, and consequently would not buy 
them, that the smallest engraved por¬ 
trait of Washington ever made is to 
be found on a stamp of Brazil, that 
Montenegro produced an issue of post- ! 
age stamps to commemorate the 400th 
anniversary of the Introduction of 
Printing into that country—how else 
would we have been reminded of it!— 
that a “tw’p’ny” landscape stamp of 1 
St. Lucia depicts “The Pythons”, that 
dread mountain whence no explorer has 
ever been known to return,—these 
things and hundreds of others are to be ' 
found in the stories told by postage 
stamps. In truth, the world’s postage 
stamps are little notebooks of modern 
history which we could scarcely afford 
to have taken from us. Indeed, no mere I 
schoolboy’s hobby is stamp collecting! 
From an artistic point of view post¬ 
age stamps offer some of the finest ex¬ 
amples of art engraving to be found, j 
Many of the designs executed by mas- I 
ter engravers have been drawn by | 
noted artists such as Eugene Graset, Luc ' 
Olivier Merson, Joseph Blac, Eugene 
Mouchon, H. Hendrix, M. A. Lemaire, i 
M. Ed. Pellens, M. -A. Van Nest de 
Berghem, Henri Menuier, F. von Kaul- 
bach, Moser, Pape, Sezanne, Morrelli, I 
Vittorio Grassi,—to name but a few of 
them. 
Ease of Collecting 
Of all objets de collectionner I know I 
of none that are so easily arranged, 
more effective when mounted for dis- : 
play, or which require so little house 
room. It is not necessary to have a 
huge album containing spaces for all 
the postage stamps ever issued in order 
to form an interesting collection. A 
loose leaf album which can be expanded ; 
with one’s increasing interest will, I i 
think, yield the most pleasure in ar- I 
rangement. As things go, postage I 
stamps—except the great rarities—are I 
the least expensive objects in proportion { 
to their interest. A truly remarkable I 
collection (in so far as beauty and as- | 
sociation interest are concerned) could i 
be formed of postage stamps whose cost I 
limit would run from but two cents | 
each to twenty-five cents apiece. The ; 
“scientific” collector may shrug his i 
shoulders at this, but I know whereof | 
I speak, and I know that a huge amount \ 
of enjoyment is to be obtained in col- j 
lecting along the lines I have suggested, 1 
without effort being made to obtain ; 
such rarities as the four penny “wood- ' 
block” error stamp of the Cape of Good : 
Hope (which fetched $2,500), the sixty : 
Crazie stamp of Tuscany (worth over ' 
$250), the pair of “Post Office” Mauri- i 
tius stamps (which fetched £3,500 in 
1910), and so on. 
There are many reputable dealers in 
■America who offer many attractive 
stamps of various issues since stamps 
have existed. Some of these send out ■ 
selections on approval at request, and i 
others issue catologs. The “Browser” : 
invariably comes upon finds, and, all in 
all, I doubt if any collecting hobby ever 
devised by acquisitiveness surpasses 
stamp collecting in its perennial charm, i 
its convenient form and its instructive ' 
impetus. 
