I wrote and told him of one gentleman’s vast collection of shells; another’s noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another’s elevating and refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another’s priceless collection of old china; another’s enchanting collection of postage-stamps—­and so forth and so on.  Soon my letters yielded fruit.  My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of.  You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates.  His soon became a raging fever, though I knew it not.  He began to neglect his great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a rabid search for curious things.  His wealth was vast, and he spared it not.  First he tried cow-bells.  He made a collection which filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one.  That one—­an antique, and the only specimen extant—­was possessed by another collector.  My uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell.  Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted.  A true collector attaches no value to a collection that is not complete.  His great heart breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied.

Thus did my uncle.  He next tried brickbats.  After piling up a vast and intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his great heart broke again; he sold out his soul’s idol to the retired brewer who possessed the missing brick.  Then he tried flint hatchets and other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself.  He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales—­another failure, after incredible labor and expense.  When his collection seemed at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all former specimens insignificant.  My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems.  He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription.  A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather part with his family than with it.  So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned white as snow in a single night.

Now he waited, and thought.  He knew another disappointment might kill him.  He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man was collecting.  He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.

“Of what?” said I.