ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE

Amid the tales of Lincoln by people who knew someone else who once met him, and the anecdotes that hitherto have escaped general publicity, comes the announcement of the novel and distinctly appropriate method of celebration adopted by the Post office Department. In the new series of stamps being prepared are two dealing with Lincoln: a three-cent bearing his portrait and a one-dollar denomination with a picture of the memorial at Washington. Last Monday the first of these was put on sale at Hodgenville, Kentucky, and the second at Springfield, Illinois, as a mark of honor for his birthplace and the town in which he lived at the time of his nomination for President. Thus did the post Office mingle sentiment with business.

The strange part of the story from the point of view of 1860, however, is that the only other place where those stamps were also procurable on their first appearance was the Government Philatelic Agency maintained for the benefit of stamp collectors.

Psychologists credit man with the instinct of acquisitiveness, and never was psychology better vindicated than by those same facts and by stamp collecting in general. Even the Jackdaw of Rheims was no more given to this acquisitiveness than the Philatelists who amassed a collection of New Zealand stamps worth, a hundred-thousand dollars. So firmly is the hobby, or the fad, rooted in human nature that a firm of stamp dealers was willing to give practically that amount for the collection in a recent sale. And a similar Swiss firm has sent its principal to this country and widely advertised his coming "for the benefit of advanced collectors".

Meantime the Postal Service continues to grow. Back in the days of the stage coach and "real romance" a couple of mail sacks would bring a week's delivery to Chicago or Louisville. Today a million and a half letters are mailed every hour and the government sells fourteen billion stamps a year.

The opportunity offered for stamp collectors in tremendous. Freaks, precan collations, surcharges become of great worth in a moment. Old correspondence is far more valuable than the gold mine recently unearthed in Pennsylvania. And for instruction purpose, if every child could be spurred on to a collection of his own, Geography. History and Current Events could be eliminated from every grade school in the country.