The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-06-05
WHAT ONE WOMAN THlNks.I
Tne Fad Of Curio Hunting That SOms4
times Develops Into a Vice.


dwarf moral sense and eventually give
rise to vicious intent. Curio hunting
and collecting has reached a point at
which it assumes the aspect not OF
kleptomania merely, but of thievery.
A more or less cultivated taste and
leisure combine to produce faddist if
the temperature is right, and when the
fad fever is well developed. nothing is
sacred from its 'scorching. Webster
says fad is triding pursuit. The
end of the century is characterized by
trifing as much as it is by earnest
measures They are the extremes Of
the swinging pendulum. To fully ap-
preciate how easily a fad may become
vice you should be victim, and
your attitude suggests the reaction
that is near at hand, and that the fad
is of short duration; that its days are
even numbered. You remember how
it was with crazy patch work; it must
be even SO with the souvenir spoon and
its companion crazes.
The spoon collector no longer buys
the souvenir spoon; he just takes it.
In the collection of souvenir spoons
owned by New York man is a spoon
belonging to nearly every frst-class
hotel in the United States, and to every
ocean steamer. He regards the fruit
of his systematic piIfering as a rare
collection of mementOes. Another man
has a collection of napkins, and anoth-
er collection of pew ter things, such
as cream pitchers and sugar bowls and
match safes, ash receivers and beer
stems. The hotels have long been &C
custOmed to relinquish large in
voices of towels with every travel
towel collecting fancy has fastened
itself upon the ordinary traveller, and
the woman who wouldn't like it at all
if she were called thief tucks clean
towel that doesn't belong to her in her
travelling bag with almost sang froid.
Just when this fad will receive its OBJ
| ject lesson can not be foretold but
| learn that hotel and observation-disclosures
are wrestling with the problem in Sc
| cret. Shall they chain the spoons down
as the public-drinking fountain does
the tin cup or as the householder does
the door mat, in order to remove tempta-
| ton from the path of the acquisitive
traveller?
Systematic thievery killed the crazy
| quilt fad. Nothing was sacred to the
| silk-scrap collector. Tapestries, wheth-
er in hangings or in furniture uphol-
steries, were all subject to the knife of
the crazy patchwork fiend. She be-
sieged the silk counter, or she begged,
! borrowed, stole or otherwise surrepti-
| tiously acquired silks to embroider, to
paint and applique, to deface, to cut
up and sew together again, to be used
in this malignant and awful affair.
Men put paddock on their hat lin
! ings and cravats, for all was sacrificed
at the shrine of the crazy quilt, soul,
nerves, brain, health, happiness, saliva
tion-everythi Women are SO
earnest in their fads and so industri-
Gus, and the crazy quilt fad was field
not often found. The soul of decora-
tive art was in it, but it became a dis
honest and thieving soul and it was
cast out, and the fad and fashion died
together.
Industry has gone out of decorative
! art, and the principle is novelty and a
suggestion of the orient. We crave the
thing that drives dull care away, and
so we classify and collect. One man
| gathers butterflies, and another shells,
and, after attaching the scientific
names and mounting them they are
| perhaps presented to a museum and
rebound to his credit. Another man
/
and another man idols. Egypt and
! Napoleon are woman's fads, and she
is arduOus and enthusiastic. All
fads die sooner or later, just as
we Outgrow the fancies of childhood,
| but there is something SO very fippant
and initiative about the present age.
| There was even sentiment in the crazy
quilt. In the bosom of the one who
invented the idea blossomed the flower
of economy and thrift; which, of itself,
is sentiment. Stray bits of silk, stray
bits of thread, stray bits of time, the
whole a fascinating diagram of per-
sonal history, a memorial to gowns and
the dear ones who wore them and who
had passed away. There must have
been more than ordinary warmth in
the coverlid, more than ordinary soft
ness to the pillow it covered. Is there
sentiment in a stolen souvenir spoon2
'Twere difficult to close this para
| graph without abiding to the stamp
| cOllector-the philatellst. Nothing but
red ink and the peu of one who has
suffered can do justice to this fad. Do
you house a philatelist under your roof?
Anthem you know! You know how
absorbed he is, and how deaf and blind
he is to all save stamps; you
| know now ne transfers them from one
album to another, and how omnipres-
ent the stamp is, how it insinuates it.
self into every nook and corner, bow
the pastors scatter on the floor. how
they get into the coffee-pot, how he
corresponds with foreign lands about
them, how he forgets all for them,
how the baby eats them and how you
sweep and sweep and yet forever
sweep, and still they are always I'M
swept.
However, this is an honest fad, and
it is instructive.
Collecting articles when merely act
uated by the impulse to own things is
laudable enough in its way, and the
sentiment that belongs with an article