Produced by Susan Skinner, Adrian Mastronardi, The Philatelic Digital Library Project at http://www.tpdlp.net and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
_With Frontispieces and many Illustrations Large Crown 8vo, cloth._
CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA. By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE. By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD PRINTS. (How to collect and value Old Engravings.) By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON COSTUME. By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.
CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK. By E. L. Lowes.
CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA. By J. F. Blacker.
CHATS ON OLD MINIATURES. By J. J. Foster, F.S.A.
CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE. By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON PEWTER. By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A.
CHATS ON POSTAGE STAMPS. By Fred. J. Melville.
CHATS ON OLD JEWELLERY AND TRINKETS. By MacIver Percival.
CHATS ON COTTAGE AND FARMHOUSE FURNITURE. By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD COPPER AND BRASS. By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON HOUSEHOLD CURIOS. By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS. By Arthur Davison Ficke.
CHATS ON MILITARY CURIOS. By Stanley C. Johnson.
CHATS ON OLD CLOCKS AND WATCHES. By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON ROYAL COPENHAGEN PORCELAIN. By Arthur Hayden.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. NEW YORK: F. A. STOKES COMPANY
(_From the painting by J. A. Vinter, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery._)
PRESIDENT OF THE JUNIOR PHILATELIC SOCIETY
Come and chat in my stamp-den, that I may encircle you with fine-spun webs of curious and rare interest, and bind you for ever to Philately, by which name we designate the love of stamps. The "den" presents no features which would at first sight differentiate it from a snug well-filled library, but a close inspection will reveal that many of the books are not the products of Paternoster Row or of Grub Street. Yet in these stamp-albums we shall read, if you will have the kindness to be patient, many things which are writ upon the postage-stamps of all nations, as in a world of books.
It is not given to all collectors to know their postage-stamps. There is the collector who merely accumulates specimens without studying them. He has eyes, but he does not see more than that this stamp is red and that one is blue. He has ears, but they only hear that this stamp cost £1,000, and that this other can be purchased wholesale at sixpence the dozen. What shall it profit him if he collect many stamps, but never discover their significance as factors in the rapid spread of civilisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The true student of stamps will extract from them all that they have to teach; he will read from them the development of arts and manufactures, social, commercial and political progress, and the rise and fall of nations.