Note 17 — IX FAMOUS COLLECTIONS

Earlier in the same year this boudoir gossiper had answered no fewer than three correspondents, "Mercury," "Daniel," and "Milly" at one shot thus: "We cannot encourage 'exchanging foreign stamps,' for we do not see the smallest good resulting from it. This foreign stamp-collecting has been a mania, which is at length dying out. Were the stamps works of art, then the collecting them might be justified. Were they, in short, anything but bits of defaced printing, totally worthless, we would try to say something in their favour. There are now so many lithographic forgeries in the market that he is the cleverest of the clever who can detect the spurious stamps from the true."—The Young Ladies' Journal, April 27, 1864.