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Ch. 3: I Became a Collector

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I Became a Collector
S mall boys will collect anything: stamps, marbles, cigarette cards, insects, photographs, autographs, bus tickets, motor-car numbers—well, just anything. But I must have been one of the very few small boys who collected precious stones. And living in an atmos­phere of gems as I did, perhaps it is no marvel that the jackdaw instincts of pre-adolescence were directed to such an exalted hobby.
I won't suggest that my specimens were world-beaters. In fact, I began my collection by buying a highly insignif­icant amethyst and paying for it in terms of spinach. Although I like spinach well enough now, it was far other­wise in the days of my youth. I had to be bribed to eat it. The terms under which I obtained my first treasure in­volved eating spinach twice a week for a month. But it was worth the price.
It was a small, rather lack-lustre amethyst that had come down in the world through no fault of its own. Apart from being a poor thing from the beginning, it had had the misfortune to be wrenched carelessly from its
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Ch. 2: I see an Opal Page of 280 Ch. 3: I Became a Collector
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