Some Men's Hobbies

A bankcr well known in the financial world died lately, in one of the Atlantic eities, at the ago of 80. leaving a property valued at millions. At'tor his death a collection of toys WM sold for over $100,000, which he had been accumulaling for twenty years. Scarcely any valuable scientiflo or mcchanical toy has been made in Europe of which he had not a specimen, but his assortment included also tho most trivial of children's playthings. Anothcr, a citizen of Jrhiladelpliia, one of the íbrcniost jnrists of his day, liad a lancy for oolleoting fairy tales. His sh'elvcs contáis tliousands of these volumes in cvory language. Manías for china, oíd bi'asaea, and rare editions are so coinmon among scholarly men that the inoongrnity of the pursuit does not strike us. The peculiarity of a hobby, indeed, is that it is usually at oada wlth the general charaeter of tho person who exhibita it. It is a bit of childhood left by careless nature among' the sterner stuif of which manhood is made. James Fiske, the most hardened and dishonest of swindlers, had a passionate love for canarios and vas surrounded by tlicm at home. Üur genial poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, (eligías in graveyaids, and boasts that he knows every oue Within forty miles of Boston, ''and wlicn the spring opens," he says, smiling, "I go out to see how ïny dead men do." The Doctor also is fond of ing witli tools. ïhe portable stereoscopic glass is liis invention. One of the most eminent surgeons in the country delights in writing poems, and very bad poems they are. Tliore can be no doubt tliat an innocent hobby (and hobbies generally are inuOceut) is a salety-valve tbr the escape of nervous exciteinent in men who use their brains to an exceptimr.il degree. For this reason they usually do niuch toward softening and humauizing the cluu-acter. Whatevur is to be a boy's trade or profeasiou, encourage in hun a taste for some hobby. - Compahijn.