Chats on Postage Stamps

Chats on Postage Stamps

Come and chat in my stamp-den, that I may encircle you with fine-spun webs of curious and rare interest, and bind you for ever to Philately, by which name we designate the love of stamps. The "den" presents no features which would at first sight differentiate it from a snug well-filled library, but a close inspection will reveal that many of the books are not the products of Paternoster Row or of Grub Street. Yet in these stamp-albums we shall read, if you will have the kindness to be patient, many things which are writ upon the postage-stamps of all nations, as in a world of books. It is not given to all collectors to know their postage-stamps. There is the collector who merely accumulates specimens without studying them. He has eyes, but he does not see more than that this stamp is red and that one is blue. He has ears, but they only hear that this stamp cost 1,000, and that this other can be purchased wholesale at sixpence the dozen. What shall it profit him if he collect many stamps, but never discover their significance as factors in the rapid spread of civilisation in the{8} nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The true student of stamps will extract from them all that they have to teach; he will read from them the development of arts and manufactures, social, commercial and political progress, and the rise and fall of nations. To the young student our pleasant pastime of stamp-collecting has to offer an encouragement to habits of method and order, for without these collecting can be productive of but little pleasure or satisfaction. It will train him to be ever observant of the minuti that matter, and it will broaden his outlook as he surveys his stamps "from China to Peru." ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 53431
Author: Melville, Frederick John
Release Date: Nov 2, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English