Page:Et Cetera, a Collector's Scrap-Book (1924).djvu/17



VER a great many years of enthusiastic "collecting," I have filled many scrap books and not a few closets with such excerpts from books and journals, old and new, as have pleased my catholic fancy. The often permanent loss of much that is fine and admirable in literature because its authors, through death, or modesty, or lack of opportunity, have neglected to collect it within covers, always has seemed to me deplorable on a number of counts; and so, entirely for my own pleasure and as a side issue in the larger enterprise of book collecting, I have treasured such lost or forgotten pieces as have come my way until something like chaos in my library has been the result.

For the most part, naturally, my salvaging has concerned itself with the flotsam and jetsam of my larger enthusiasms; but many pleasant tales and