I may be a Duffer, but I hope I am neither an idiot nor a cad.  I have never collected postage-stamps, nor outraged common humanity by asking people to send me their autographs.  With these exceptions I have failed as a collector of almost everything.  To succeed you need luck, and a dash of unscrupulousness, and careful attention to details, and a sceptical habit of mind.  Even as a small boy I used to waste my shillings at a funny little curiosity-shop, kept by a nice old lady who knew no more about her wares than I did.  Here I acquired quite a series of old coppers, which Mrs. SOMERVILLE said were ancient Bactrian.  We asked where Bactria was, and she replied that it was a “country beyond Cyrus.”  We answered that Cyrus was not a territorial but a personal name, “A fellow, don’t you know, not a place,” but the old lady’s information stopped there.  I wonder where my Bactrian Collection is now.  Certainly I never sold it; indeed, I never sold anything; not only because nobody would buy, but because, after all, one is a Collector, not a tradesman.  Birds’ eggs I would have collected if I could, but you had first to find the bird’s nest (almost an impossible quest for a born Duffer), and to blow the eggs, which, let me tell you, needs nicety of handling.  I did once find a thrush’s nest, and tried blowing an egg, but it was not wholly a success, and the egg (the contents of which I accidentally absorbed) was not wholly fresh.  Then it is awkward when you are at the top of a tall tree, with an egg in your mouth, for safety, if the other boys make you laugh, as you try to come down.  It is the egg which,—­but enough!  Everyone who has been in that position will understand what is meant.  It is not difficult to collect shells on the seashore, but it is extremely difficult to find out what shells they are, after you have collected them.

[Illustration:  “And, in shooting at the cats with a crossbow, I had the misfortune to break several windows.”]

Conchology is no child’s play.  As to collecting marine animals for an aquarium, the trouble begins when you forget your acquisitions, and carry them about for some time in the pockets of your jacket.  That jacket is apt to be dusted by the bigger boys, who also interfere with your affections for toads, lizards, snakes and other live stock dear to youth.  The common ambition of boyhood is to be a great rabbit-grower, but, somehow, my rabbits did not thrive.  The cats got at them, and, in shooting at the cats with a crossbow, I had the misfortune to break several windows, and riddle a conservatory.

The chief objects of my later ambition have been rare old books, gems, engravings, china, and so forth.  All these things, if they are to be collected, demand that you shall have your wits about you; and the peculiarity of the Duffer is that his wits are always wool-gathering.  A nice collection of wool they must have stored up somewhere.  As to books, one invariably begins by collecting the wrong things.  In novels and