Eight Scribulus COLLECTO-MANIA By Louise Linton Is there a man with soul so dead that his heart does not skip a beat when he sees a chance to add another piece to his collection? If there is, I should like to meet him, for he must be a queer creature. Almost everyone has something he likes to collect, be it money, debts, safety pins, friends, poems, or polly-wogs. I remember that once, when a child, I gathered polly-wogs. I added to and cared for my collection until finally, when they began to develop legs, shorten their tails, and give promise of being a group of fine young frogs, my mother decided that my collecting instinct must be satisfied in some other way. Now every time I pass a certain canal winding its way toward a nearby city, I wonder if the posterity of my favorite polly-wogs are alive and croaking their songs to the farmer's daughter instead of to me. Some children manage to make a collection of articles a bit more valuable than my misunderstood polly-wogs. In one town a group of youngsters gathered safety-pins. Big pins, little pins, middle-sized pins, bent pins, straight pins, pins that were "swiped" from mother's pincushion or from dad's overalls, and pins that were picked up from the street all were fastened together chain style on the inside of the girls' dresses and the boys' overalls. When the thread of safety-pins became so long that it could be seen below the girls' dresses, it was doubled back and started all over again. When mother wanted a pin, there was a mad scramble and a roaring jargon of voices to convince her that brother or sister had the longest string, for it was the custom that the winning individual must divide with mama when she needed a safety-pin. Mother, when she wanted a pin, had only to call for human pin-cushions, and they came running to her. The convenience of such an arrangement can easily be recognized except When mother needs a pin when her children are all at the theatre watching Tom Mix in "The Ranger at VA" or Shirley Temple in "Our Little Girl," and all the family safety-pins with them. Of course I collected pictures of movie stars, too. What girls haven't? I can remember how thrilled I used to be when my father brought me home a screen magazine or when the paper published a picture of Mary Brian. I used to be entranced with the virile Milton Sils, the man-of-the-world, Lewis Stone, the beautiful Mary Astor, the towering Monte Blue, and the petite Betty Bronson. Mother prohibited the presence of their pictures upstairs, but in the basement I had complete control. After two years of following my collecting instinct, two of the basement walls were covered with my pictures. A screen, which Was really used to hide the furnace, was ostensibly merely another few feet of solid surface upon which my chums and I could paste pictures. If there was a little girl who liked movie stars in the family of the next renter of the house, she must have been enthralled with my picture gallery. But that was not all. Besides covering the walls, we filled scrap-book after scrap-book. To the distraction of my mother, I had a suitcase so full that I could not close it. My friends envied me, but I envied them, too, with the result that we traded pictures back and forth one of John Boles for one of Janet Gaynor, one Scribulus Nine of Janet Gaynor for one of James Hall, and one of James Hall for one of Colleen Moore. The stars in distant Hollywood caused more bickering and childish quarrels than they could have imagined had they tried. Almost every girl has this passion for pictures at some time of her life, and it is certainly not rare to find the rooms of young maidens, young matrons, old maids, old matrons, middle-aged maids, and middle-aged matrons, whose dreams of romance still burn brightly, cluttered up with pictures of Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, and Henry Fonda. The "bug" even occasionally bites a fellow, and his walls are adorned with pictures of fair Carole Lombard, Janet Gaynor, and Claudette Colbert, whose hearts he dreams of winning. Boys, too, have a mania which usually attacks them at some time of their lives; that is the mania of marble gathering. Bill, my cousin, loved marbles. Being lucky in the game, he usually had a 'big' collection. They were his treasures, and he knew each marble. In fact he almost named some of them. He knew them so well that he was usually able to identify those which had strayed from his sack to that of a friend. His younger brother, Ray, however, was not so fortunate, and one time found himself without a marble to his name. He did not like the idea that his own brother should have more than he, so he proceeded to do something about the matter. One day when he was sure that Bill was not around, he carefully unscrewed the hinges on the locked trunk which contained the valuable treasure, and in a series of games between his absent brother and himself won enough marbles at least to start in another game. Ray had done his work well, and the tampered-with hinges passed unnoticed by Bill, but the absent marbles did not, A careful count revealed an alarming deficit, and the marbles with which his brother was playing seemed surprisingly familiar so surprisingly familiar that Bill threatened to leave home unless they were returned to him. A stamp collector often keeps his treasures behind a locked door, and he keeps the key with him always, to guard against the invasion of the anticipated thief, who would covet these invaluable stamps above all else. How he worries, and with no reason, for a collection has but one slave its owner. An individual who corresponds with someone from a foreign country is immediately beseiged by the youngsters of the neighborhood for stamps; men pay hard-earned money for the treasures to add to their collections. Millionaires are renowned for their obsession for treasures. They have the original of a famous picture, a letter from Napoleon, a chair that belonged to Queen Elizabeth, and one of George Washington's canes. I once read of a man who had as his hobby collecting antique letters. By a unique arrangement of celophane and letters, he was able to fill several scrap-books in such a way that both sides of the stationery were visible. Others spend thousands of dollars collecting the genealogy of their forefathers. Museums are magnificent manifestations of the vitalness of collecting in the human life. Even the poor people love antiques. Old is the story of the abused husband whose wife, afflicted with antique-mania, makes home unbearable by filling it with old and reputable furniture that crumbles to bits with little more than the touch of the hand. One girl I know collects statues of dogs, elephants, and what-nots. She has a pink soap bull-dog, a red glass camel, a fuzzy purple elephant, a smooth green terrier, and a beautiful blue kitten. This summer she added a black and white Scotty from New York. Her colony once resided upon a table, and when she dusted, continued on page thirteen