October, 19 2 0 
27 
COLLECTING AUTOGRAPHS 
A Hobby That Gives the Collector a Poignant and Realistic 
tonius, “collected" and handed down Sue¬ 
tonius’s own record of the fact. Thus we see 
what valuable members of society are the col¬ 
lectors of autographs, the appendices to His¬ 
tory, as Francis Bacon called them. 
As the intelligent collecting and preserving 
of precious written souvenirs of persons of note 
progressed, there followed those unintelligent 
faddists who imagined that signatures of the 
writers were what the collectors they sought to 
imitate were seeking. Hence it followed that a 
ruthless slaughter set in. Fine letters, priceless 
documents, family papers, unique manuscripts 
were, when set upon by these misguided 
"fiends,” slaughtered and robbed of their sig¬ 
natures. I have seen a collection of five hun¬ 
dred mere signatures of noted men and women, 
signatures that had been cut from their context 
and pasted in a book, proudly displayed as a 
“collection,” whereas it was merely a sad 
“gathering,” a sort of autograph-morgue, leav¬ 
ing one amazed that so many treasures should 
have been destroyed to obtain mere signatures. 
(Continued on page 76) 
Touch with the Great of the Pasi 
GARDNER TEALL 
E VER since handwriting was evolved, the 
actual written words of the wise, the 
great, the interesting, the entertaining, in fact 
of every man who has contributed his word or 
two to History have been treasured as precious 
relics of their authors. I suppose autograph 
collecting has claim to a remote antiquity, to 
an age before the invention of paper when 
parchment and papyrus served to arrest the 
thoughts of the scribe. Suetonius, chief gos- 
siper of the first century Anno Domine, in 
whose Lives of the Twelve Caesars occurs the 
earliest known use of the word “autograph,” 
relates that he possessed several little pocket- 
books containing some well-known verses in 
the handwriting of the Emperor Nero and 
written, says he, in such a manner that it was 
very evident, from the blotting and interlining, 
that they had not been transcribed from a copy, 
not dictated by another, but were written by 
the composer of them. This little sidelight 
on the literary proclivities of the imperial 
fiddler would never have come down to us had 
not someone, as curiously inclined as Sue- 
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now by Law. cm '-snt,. according to the Dave- '-.r 
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.4 Colonial note bearing the signature 
oj John Nixon, who first read to the 
public the Declaration of Independence 
