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Some Men's Hobbies

Some Men's Hobbies image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
February
Year
1880
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

A banker, well known in the financia! world, died in one of the Atlantic cides, at tlie age of 80, leaving a property valued at ruillions. After bis death a collection of toys was sold fór over $ 1 00,000. which he had been acouniulating for twenty yeurs. Scarcely any valuable or uaechanieal toy liad beeo made in Kurope of wbich he had nota specimen, but hisassortinentincluded, USO, tlie DBOS( tiivial of children's playthings. Another, a citizen of Philadelphia, one of tlie fon most jurista of his day, had a faney f'orcnllecting fairy tales. Hissbelves coutained thousands oí these volumes in every lauguagc. Manías for cliina, oíd hfÉMfin and rarc ediiions aie 80 coiiiuion among í-cholarly men that the ineongruity of the pursuit does nót strike us. Tlie peculiamy of a bobby, indtcd, is that it is UHually at odds wit li the general character of t person who exhibits it. It is a bit of ehildhood lcft by careless nature aimng the sterner stufT of which manhood is made. James Fisk, the most hardened and dis honest of swindlers, had a pa.ssionate love for canaries, and was surrounded by theiu at honie. Our genial poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, delights in graveyards, boasts that he knows every one within forty miles of Boston, "and when the spiing opens," he says, sniiling, " I go out to"see how my dead uien do." The doctor, also, i fond of working witb tools. The portable stereoscopic gusa a liis invention. One of the most eminent surgcons in the country delij;lits in writing ]ioems, aod vcry bad poems they are. There can be no doubt that an innocent hobby (aud hebbies generally are innocent) is a safety-valve for the escape of neryoas ezcitement in men who use their brains to an txceptional degree. For thw reason thcy usually do muuli toward softeningand huiuanizing thecliaracter. Wliatever is to be a boy's trade or prol'e.sMim, encourage in him a taste tor music, or art, fihintr, guntiitif.' ; miiih1 hobby, in short. Befare you fill tli boiler and build ihefiro,