Excerpt from Autograph Collections and Historic Manuscripts Unhappily, the enthusiastic collector sometimes becomes so fascinated by his hobby that he proceeds to exhaust his store of postage stamps in writing to noted people begging for autographs. Ah, this is desecration! The true disciple and lover of historic and literary treasures will scorn to con descend to such malpractice. Think of a fellow having the nerve to indite an epistle to Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, in these words: Please kindly send me your auto graph, and oblige a great admirer. Inclosed find postage stamp. And yet the good Queen rewarded an acquaint ance of mine by having her secretary send' him an apparent ly genuine signature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.