Efforts to restore the lost treasure were not wanting.  It might be supposed that the possession of such rare tokens of value would have speedily led to the discovery of their whereabouts.  Mr. Mickley himself intimated that he suspected the quarter from which the depredation had come.  Yet from that day until the present the secret has been as securely kept as that of the rifling of Lord Byron’s letter from a vase at Abbotsford, or of the Duchess of Devonshire’s portrait from the London Art-Gallery.  In fact, the same mild generosity which had always characterized Mr. Mickley still came uppermost in the face of this trying disaster.  He frequently sought to overlook the misdoings of petty thieves.  A London pickpocket who had successfully practised upon him Oliver Twist’s little game was only prosecuted because his testimony was insisted upon by the authorities.  At the foot of the Pyramids he deplored the chastisement inflicted by an Arab sheik upon one of his native servants who had committed a similar depredation.  His life-long friend the late William E. Dubois, of the United States Mint, has stated that “eight or nine years after the robbery a few very fine gold pieces of English coinage were offered for sale at the Mint cabinet-rooms.  I was so well convinced that the labels were in his handwriting that I sent for him to come and see them.  He could not deny the likeness, but seemed reluctant to entertain the subject at all.”

During these years of study and research Mr. Mickley must not be thought of as a strict specialist.  Side by side with his fascinating collection of coins there was an ever-growing library, the extent and value of which were never appreciated until his death.  This accumulation was in itself an example of his cosmopolitan tastes.  It was copious in local history, in biography, in music, in general literature, in costly and well-preserved black-letter editions, in illuminated missals dating back to the thirteenth century, and, above all else, in autographs.  Of the latter, space cannot be spared here for anything approaching a full description.  As some indication of their value, it may be mentioned that a letter of George Washington (the last he was known to write), dated six days before his death, was bought by George W. Childs, Esq., for one hundred and fifteen dollars.  A letter of Abraham Lincoln to General McClellan fetched nearly one hundred dollars.  There were also signed autograph letters of all the governors of Pennsylvania, of all the Presidents, and of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  The latter group is rarely met with complete; and three of the scarcest names alone sold for as much as all the others put together.  There were signatures also of about forty generals of the Revolutionary war, of both the British and American armies, and including Lafayette and Kosciusko.  Both Napoleon and Josephine were represented; and the lovers of poetic justice will be glad to know that the latter name brought double