Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1881-01-26
SILLY RELATIONSHIP.
Former High Prices for Personal Relics Oft
Men---Newton's Tooth and NapoIeon's Ha
From the. London Standa1

lfrOm LONDON Standard
The low prices which personal relics
bring nowadays, compared with what
was cheerfully paid for them 40 OF 50
years ago, is, We think, sign that pub
lie taste is improving. For instance, a
tooth of Sir Isaac Newton was sold in
1916 for the sum of G730. Doubtless
this is small compared with the ESQ, 900
which the king of Pegu offered the Por-
tuguese as the ransom of Buddha's tooth,
now in the Temple of Adams Peak, in
Ceylon. But the one bit of dentine is
of much the same value as the other, for
though an Owen can reproduce a masto-
don or a megatherium from single
tooth, the most learned amateur would
fail to discover anything to distinguish
the molar of the author of the &C Prin-
cipia from that extracted from the jaw
of the veriest clodhopper that ever ate
bacon. The hat worn by Napoleon I.
at the battle of Eylau was sold in 1885
for ], 920f., though at recent sale num-
erous relics of the Emperor brought
mere trifles The ivory armchair pre-
sented to Gustavus Adolphus by the OBJ
sequious city of Lubbock was sold in 1926
for So, 900 horins, while thecoat worn by
Charles XII, at the battle of Pultowa
fetched at sale in the same year the
enormous sum of SCI ,OOOf The two
pens employed in signing the treaty of
Amiens were also disposed of in that
year of unwisdom for $500. A wig be-
longing to Sterne brought 200 guineas,
though one which had formerly covered
the head of Kant was not assessed by
his cOuntryman at more than the same
number of francs. Voltaire's cane real
lied at an auction 500f, and a waist
coat belonging to Rousseau 950f., and his
pinchbeck watch nearly halt as much.
The Partisan caricatllrist. it is true, still
represents the Englishman chipping the
Parthenon or whiting the bark Of the
tree under which some famous persons
sat, or upon which some famous one was
hanged. But such Englishman is now
a relic-hunter of very humble order.
Even the little cabinets OF locks of hair,
which were at one time so fashionable,
seem to have disappeared, and with the
exception of the Ashmolean, and few
other Old World collections, public mu-
seums are rapidly getting rid of much
of the rubbish that once encum-
bered them. The over-zealous collectors
began tofnd that crriosities," like an
tiquities generally, were apt to multiply
in an exact ratio to the elasticity of pub
lie credulity. The Americans discovered
four years ago that "Gen. Washington's
chair Z" seemed to have acquired the
property of reproducing other chairs af-
ter it's own likeness; and since her Maj
esty has presented to the President of
the United States cabinet made out of
the planks of the Resolute we may ex-
pect to find furniture from that vessel
becoming suspiciously plentiful. There
are snuff boxes of the Royal Georges
timbers numerous enough to build
squadron. The inmates of two rival
French inconsistencies used to exhibit, the
one the skull of John the Baptist Sc when
he was boy, F." the other his Gran ium at
ter he had become man. The effront-
cry of the modern relic-maker is scar cely
less heroic, and it has had one good re-
suit. 1t has acted as an antidote to silly
relic-worship.