and heraldry are favorite tidbits with him, while clergymen often have a special mania for county histories. The collectors of minor curiosities, miscellaneous objects from all parts of the world, are generally old maiden ladies, who have, as a class, the most amiable and touching weaknesses, such as that of the benevolent little fairy, Miss Farebrother, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, who drops her lumps of sugar in a little basket on her lap, that she may have them to bestow upon her friends, the street-boys. Then there are collectors innumerable of stuffed beasts, of shells, of minerals, of old china, laces, and jewelry, of heathen idols, of all kinds of coins, of autographs, of postage-stamps, etc. The autograph-hunter is a very restless and persistent individual. The American who sent a cheese to Queen Victoria must have been of this species, and the queen did not fail to reward him with a letter written with her own hand.
A hobby that used to be rather prevalent, but has somewhat gone out of fashion now, was that of collecting walking-sticks, canes, snuff-boxes, and pipes. Apropos to this, a story is told of an old man whose special mania was snuff as well as snuff-boxes. He was a man of some standing in English society towards the latter end of the last century. His sitting-room was fitted up with shelves like a shop, and on these stood canisters of various kinds of snuff, their names on labels, and the locks and keys of fantastic and rather ingenious shape. This sanctum was his delight, and the shelves, which ran all round the room, were being constantly replenished with new specimens of the weed. He used snuff to an enormous extent, and willingly gave it away to his
friends; but storing it was his chief pleasure, and he looked forward to the last variety in snuff—which his tobacconist had a standing order to send him as soon as it touched English soil—with the same glee with which a naturalist expects the newest kind of living ape just imported from Africa.
We have never heard but of one person who made a spécialité of collecting pieces of wedding-cake; she was an old nurse who had been in the service of a lady employed about the court of William IV. She had pieces of the wedding-cakes of all the princesses of the royal family, including Queen Victoria and some of her daughters, besides remains of the cakes of her mistress’s family, a large and ramified one, and of those of any person of title or distinction of whom, through her connections, she could possibly beg these mementoes.
The horticultural mania, emphatically a hobby for the rich, is one of the most charming and desirable of hobbies; a healthy one, too, as it keeps one out in the open air to a great extent, and supplies the place of such feverish excitements as arise from an interest in politics or in the state of the funds. It even takes away the possibility of interest in petty gossip; for how is it possible to think of the success of Mrs. So-and-so’s coming tea-party when your mind is anxiously engaged on the chance of a late frost ruining your camellias, or the probable time when your Victoria Regia will bloom?
A hobby rather prevalent among women is a constant attendance at auctions. They cannot resist buying little things they do not want, because they are cheap; and, besides, there is a fascination about the atmosphere of a salesroom which is not reducible to mere words. It is
milk-and-water gambling, as are many other innocent-looking devices used by very worthy people to increase their stock of pretty possessions without paying full value for them. Very opposite to this is the hobby of petty economies, such as untying a knot instead of cutting it, secreting tiny bits of pencil, keeping a strict watch over matches and candle-ends, etc. It may be a mere habit of mind, but it often degenerates into a foolish hobby, such as is that of keeping every scrap of cloth, silk, or flannel, and carrying about this rubbish from place to place, for the chance of its “coming in usefully” at some future time. Of course we know how many a gorgeous quilt has been evolved from these savings of years, and how mats have been made of the coarser refuse, and the rest sometimes thriftily sold to the paper-mill; but these are often exceptions, for time and deftness are wanting to many who have the instinct of saving, and such small economies are apt to have in themselves a tendency to narrow the mind. Besides, what is thrift in one case is parsimony in another; and while one family may be praise-worthy in its attempts to “take care of the pence,” such care would be despicable in another of easier means.
Shall we call it a hobby to “have one’s finger in every pie”? Some people are not happy unless they are giving their neighbors gratuitous advice, and telling them at every turn how they would act “if I were you.” But of this kind of interference none is so dangerous and none so fascinating as the well-meant contrivances of the born match-maker. This individual is invariably a woman, and generally a most amiable and kind creature.
Sometimes a young matron is bitten with the mania, and clumsily enough she sets to work extolling the delights of the honeymoon to her girl friends; sometimes a middle-aged woman who has had experience, and is more wary in her method, quietly sets her snares and unluckily succeeds once in five times—unluckily, we say; for her one success blinds her to her four failures, and she continues in the slippery path which, in the end, is almost sure to bring ruin on some special pet of hers. Even unmarried women are match-makers; they will plan, and speculate, and contrive; and it is lucky indeed if they are nothing more than indiscreet, for they are handling edged tools. You never find a man to be a match-maker; and yet women will have it that men are so much more benefited by matrimony than themselves!
Among special hobbies, one is said to have been the property of a rich old Englishman of the olden time, who altered a house on purpose to suit it. He could not bear the sight of a female servant, and so angry was he at meeting one on the stairs that he sent for a mason to contrive hiding-places here and there in which an unlucky maid, if she chanced to meet the master, might take refuge out of his sight. The whole house was full of such cunningly-placed holes, and in this odd, honey-combed state it passed to his next heir.