The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1897-04-29

The collection of postage stamps Is
something in which many persons are
engaged and thousands more interested.
1t is really one of the fads in which
young and old find equal enjoyment.
The little miss not yet in the grammar
school and her mother at home both
pursue with equal eagerness the accu-
mutation of those little bits of gummed
paper which carry articles through the
mail the world over. Strange and
unique are the forms the collections
take in order that they may be prop
erly preserved. But Mrs. Wilson's is
the queerest of them all. Included in
the tiny specimens of stamps which
conceal every vestige of woodwork
about the furniture which they adorn,
are stamps from everywhere that the
International postal system reigns and
several places where no exchange of
mail matter has yet been agreed upon.
All these are arranged in a manner as
quaint as the idea itself. 1t must not
be supposed that Mrs. Wilson's patriot
ism is of so light an order that she
would permit any other than the
stamps of the United States to be in
the majority. There are the faces of
every president who has been allowed
to be made a sample of the steel en-
graver's art from Washington down.
There are odd old stamps which most
people have forgotten ever existed,
stamps only known to the stamp col
lector as 4 rule, and which would be
immensely valuable by themselves.
All these curios are of our W make,
that have borne missives ON many a
strange erran0.
There are stamps which journeyed
about in the crazy postal c~onveyances
which carried the mail that was not
Uncle Sans during the days when
civil war ragged relentlessly. Then
there are stamps of the days when
the missives from Southern battlefelds
to Northern homes brought both Joy
and sorrow, the latter quite as often as
the former. There are one or two
stamps that were used when California
was the Golden Gate to so many for
tune seekers. The nations history is
| plastered all over this furniture and the
| story that might be told about it, if
the truth were known, would no doubt
make it vie in interest in the eyes
of the American people with the treas
ures of Mount Vernon, the sacred rel
les of Springfield, or those remem-
ORANGES to which all the world bows at
Galena. There is no particular meth
cd of arrangement of this nearly a
million of stamps. Noble and peasant
| are side by side, and the commonest
bit of postage evidence is just as liza
BILE to have a position of honor as the
big piece of gummed paper with two
figures on it. Evidently Mrs. Wilson
believes with the poet, that rank is but
the guinea stamp.
Of the foreign specimens Of postal
necessities there are very many, and
as odd as they are numerous. The
queer-looking, dark colored affair that
comes from the land of the Cossack and
of Tolstoi seems strangely out of place,
lodged for life on a bit of wood in q
town where the very essence of free
dom is in the air itself. Properly
enough, there nestles close to the re-
minder of the Little Fathers country
the stately and benignant face of her
gracious majesty on whose empire the
sun never sets. Alongside of these two
is the jolly postal emblem of Roumania,
while the kaiser's youthful face looks
out at you from his neighbor that once
brought a letter from the land that now
Is wrenched with tie t?les Of Gtambou-
lofts assassination.
Then King Humber looks out from
near by, while-and one may almost