The Virgin of the Sun | Page 4

up upon our
modern shore.
The great collectors are not of this class. Having large sums at their
disposal, these acquire any rarity that comes upon the market and add it

to their store which in due course, perhaps immediately upon their
deaths, also will be put upon the market and pass to the possession of
other connoisseurs. Nor are the dealers who buy to sell again and thus
grow wealthy. Nor are the agents of museums in many lands, who
purchase for the national benefit things that are gathered together in
certain great public buildings which perhaps, some day, though the
thought makes one shiver, will be looted or given to the flames by
enemies or by furious, thieving mobs.
Those that this Editor has in mind, from one of whom indeed he
obtained the history printed in these pages, belong to a quite different
category, men of small means often, who collect old things, for the
most part at out-of-the-way sales or privately, because they love them,
and sometimes sell them again because they must. Frequently these old
things appeal, not because of any intrinsic value that they may have,
not even for their beauty, for they may be quite unattractive even to the
cultivated eye, but rather for their associations. Such folk love to reflect
upon and to speculate about the long-dead individuals who have owned
the relics, who have supped their soup from the worn Elizabethan
spoon, who have sat at the rickety oak table found in a kitchen or an
out-house, or upon the broken, ancient chair. They love to think of the
little children whose skilful, tired hands wrought the faded sampler and
whose bright eyes smarted over its innumerable stitches.
Who, for instance, was the May Shore ("Fairy" broidered in a bracket
underneath, was her pet name), who finished yonder elaborate example
on her tenth birthday, the 1st of May--doubtless that is where she got
her name--in the year 1702, and on what far shore does she keep her
birthdays now? None will ever know. She has vanished into the great
sea of mystery whence she came, and there she lives and has her being,
forgotten upon earth, or sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. Did she die young
or old, married or single? Did she ever set /her/ children to work other
samplers, or had she none? was she happy or unhappy, was she homely
or beautiful? Was she a sinner or a saint? Again none will ever know.
She was born on the 1st of May, 1692, and certainly she died on some
date unrecorded. So far as human knowledge goes that is all her history,
just as much or as little as will be left of most of us who breathe to-day

when this earth has completed two hundred and eighteen more
revolutions round the sun.
But the kind of collector alluded to can best be exemplified in the
individual instance of him from whom the manuscript was obtained, of
which a somewhat modernized version is printed on these pages. He
has been dead some years, leaving no kin; and under his will, such of
his motley treasures as it cared to accept went to a local museum, while
the rest and his other property were sold for the benefit of a mystical
brotherhood, for the old fellow was a kind of spiritualist. Therefore,
there is no harm in giving his plebeian name, which was Potts. Mr.
Potts had a small draper's shop in an undistinguished and rarely visited
country town in the east of England, which shop he ran with the help of
an assistant almost as old and peculiar as himself. Whether he made
anything out of it or whether he lived upon private means is now
unknown and does not matter. Anyway, when there was something of
antiquarian interest or value to be bought, generally he had the money
to pay for it, though at times, in order to do so, he was forced to sell
something else. Indeed these were the only occasions when it was
possible to purchase anything, indifferent hosiery excepted, from Mr.
Potts.
Now, I, the Editor, who also love old things, and to whom therefore Mr.
Potts was a sympathetic soul, was aware of this fact and entered into an
arrangement with the peculiar assistant to whom I have alluded, to
advise me of such crises which arose whenever the local bank called
Mr. Potts's attention to the state of his account. Thus it came about that
one day I received the following letter:--
Sir,
The Guv'nor has gone a bust upon some cracked china, the ugliest that
ever I saw though no judge. So if you want to get that old tall clock at
the first price or any other of his rubbish, I