OLD RUGS, OLD IRON
OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS
A Brief Brochure on the Search
For the Antique
By a Professional
Jared P. Kilgallen, J.D. and R.P.
(A Second-Cousin of Professor Kilgallen)
The lure of the antique! Who is there that has not thrilled and flushed at the words?
I confess at the outset: I am a collector and you may even call me by that damning word “dealer,” too, if you choose, since, like all non-amateur collectors, I part with items of my collection from time to time; or, if you prefer to put it so, from day to day. No collection is a permanency until it is established in an endowed museum: all private collections are constantly in a state of fluctuation, or flux; for the taste of the true collector is as constantly altering. Other contingencies also affect collections. For instance, no collection of Colonial utensils is safe from carelessness, and I have known a pair of the virtually priceless old hand-wrought 1852 B-mark Brunswick sheep-clippers to be thrown out upon an ash-heap by an Irish housemaid under the impression that they were valueless even to herself. (I know this because those very clippers formed a temporary part of my own possessions immediately afterward.)
Every collector is aware also that after the visits of even the best-introduced people almost any small article in a collection may be missing; and under such circumstances the tracing of the lost item may prove too embarrassing to be considered. My good friend, Dr. G—— R—— Vet. M.D. and Surg. of Erie, Pennsylvania, missed a valuable metal medallion of President Rutherford B. Hayes (circa ’78) in this way, after the visit of a number of his wife’s relatives to the famous old G—— R—— Manse at Erie. What is a collector to do in a case like this, when a complaint might endanger actual estrangement? Dr. G—— R—— informed me himself that when he discovered his loss he thought the matter over for some days and decided to say nothing about it.
