On entering the world, as the phrase goes, he came into possession of a small patrimony and accepted a minor editorial position on a feeble religious monthly.  For the ensuing fifteen years John Baxter overtly read manuscripts, composed headlines for edifying extracts, even wrote didactic little articles on his own account.  Secretly, meanwhile, the lust of the eye was claiming him, and he was becoming surcharged with a single great passion.

His ascent through books, prints, Colonial furniture, miniatures, rugs, and European porcelain to the dizzy heights of Chinese porcelain and Japanese pottery and painting, it would be tedious and unprofitable to follow.  It is enough to say that all along the course his dull grey eye emphatically proved itself the one thing not mediocre about him.  It grasped the quality of a fine thing unerringly; it sensed a stray good porcelain from the back row of the auction room.  How he knew without knowing why was a mystery to his fellows and even to himself.  For if he frequented the museums of New York, and had made one memorable pilgrimage to the Oriental collections of Boston, he was quite without travel, and his education had been chiefly that of the shops and salesrooms.  Thus his finds represented less knowledge than an active faith which served as well.  A Gubbio lustre jug of museum rank had been bought before he knew the definition of majolica.  Before he had learned the peril of such a hazard he had fearlessly rescued a real Kirman mat from an omnibus sale.  His scraps of old Chinese bronze and stoneware represented the promptings of a demon who had yet to discover the difference between Sung and Yungching.

These achievements gave John Baxter a certain notoriety in his world and the unusual luxury of self esteem.  What brought him the scorn of blunter associates, who openly derided him as a crank, assured him a certain deference from the cognoscenti.  The small dealers respected him as an authority; the auctioneers greeted him by name as he slipped into his chair, and appealed to him personally when a fine lot hung shamefully.  He had the entree at two or three of the more discerning among the great dealers, who occasionally asked his opinion or gave him a bargain.  In short a really impressive John as he sees himself was growing up within the skin of poor John Baxter, feeble scribbler for the weak-kneed religious press.  As he looked about his cluttered room of an evening he could whisper proudly, “No, it’s not a collection, but I can wait.  And there is meanwhile nothing in this room that is not good, very good of its type.”  Sometimes in more expansive musings he would take out of its brocaded bag a wooden tobacco box artfully incrusted with lacquer, pewter, and mother of pearl, the work of the great Korin, and would declare aloud, “Nobody has anything better than this, no museum, certainly no mere millionaire.”