When at last the machine was raised sufficiently for Jeremiah to crawl out, he emerged

downfall under the charitable cover of darkness, two badly frightened but jubilant boys might have been seen racing for Mr. Perkins'

SCARCELY an American boy grows to manhood without having an autograph fad of one kind or another. Perhaps it is authors he pursues, or it may be public men like President Roosevelt or distinguished foreigners like Admiral Togo or M. Witte. In any case the young collector almost inevitably gets a vast amount of pleasure and profit from the hunt; and if he has been a successful collector as a boy he often turns his attention, when he has become a man, to the serious work of gathering rare autographs of real value.

The most interesting as well as the most valuable autographs in this country are those which were affixed to the famous document whose signing we celebrate on the Fourth of July. To the men engaged in collecting these, American history owes much; for their enthusiasm is constantly bringing old documents to the fore and their researches act as a stimulus of no mean value in the study of the services rendered to Liberty by the Fathers of the Revolution. In these days, moreover, the autographs of the Signers are appallingly difficult to obtain.

Incidentally, too, collectors help to correct some of the many misstatements with which our history is weighed down. Every collector, for instance, knows and strenuously asserts that the Declaration was merely adopted, not signed, on July 4, 1776. John Hancock may have signed the act on that day but no others did. It was, however, presented July 4, and later ordered engrossed on parchment. Most of the Immortal Fifty-six signed the document on August 2, 1776.

The signing of this important document at Philadelphia was a solemn act, an act requiring the greatest firmness and patriotism in those who committed it. It was treason against the home government; it subjected those who signed it to the danger of an ignominious

death. Franklin, with his customary humor, observed as he made his sweeping autograph that if they did not "all hang together" they would surely "hang separately." And there was more than a joke in that. The special hardships to which the Signers were afterwards subjected proved that England had carefully marked for the severest penalty those whose names had been appended to the famous document. But neither firmness nor patriotism was wanting in that august assembly. The Signers' judgment and discretion, their purity of purpose and integrity of conduct, made them sure, even when the colonies they represented lacked something of the courage they should have had, that to them as individuals life would be worth living only as they subscribed bravely to this,-America's Magna Charta.

As we study the original document now locked up in the archives at Washington or examine the signatures on the excellent reproductions which are fortunately fairly common we seem to be very near the men who, one hundred and thirty years ago, affixed their names to this epoch-making document. Many of them were very young in 1776; Rutledge and Lynch were twenty-five; Heywood was thirty, Dr. Rush thirty-one, Jefferson and Middleton thirty-three and Hooper thirty-four. Franklin was, of course, an old man, the very patriarch of the group, being over seventy when the colonies became a nation. But paper was expensive in war times, some of the Signers died within a few years of the Declaration's birth and others failed to treasure as we would wish the letters and papers to which they affixed their names. So, even when the collecting began seventy-five years ago the task of completing a set was considerable.

The forerunner in this country of collectors of Signers' autographs, seems to have been Israel K. Tefft, a poor Rhode Island lad born.

something over a century ago. Young Tefft who early lost his parents, was raised on a farm. A varied commercial experience occupied him afterward until, about 1815, he began to save Signers' autographs.

It was not a difficult matter in those days to collect some of these valuable relics, but many

The Sour

of Mr. Tefft's experiences would make us believe that a special Providence had been enlisted Visiting once (about 1845) a gentleman's residence near Savannah and finding the owner absent, he walked out on the lawn. A paper was blown across his path, and listlessly picking it up, he observed with joy that it was one of the rare autographs of a

Georgia Signer, of which he had been long in active pursuit. When the owner returned and Mr. Tefft was asked to specify the amount of his fee for the business he had come to transact, he replied," I shall charge nothing if you will allow me to keep this piece of paper I found on your lawn." The gentleman replied that he was welcome to the paper; that its writer had once occupied the house, and that his own servants had recently cleaned an old garret of papers, of which this was a waif. The autograph was that of Button Gwinnett, the rarest, not only of the Georgia Signers, but (excepting the signature of Thomas Lynch) of the whole immortal fifty-six !

Almost, if not quite as early a collector as Mr. Tefft, was the Rev. Dr. William B. Sprague, of Andover, Connecticut. Dr. Sprague was graduated at Yale College in 1815, and during the latter part of his senior year was invited, through the honorable Timothy Pitkin and Professor Silliman of Yale, to go to Virginia as an instructor in the family of Major Lawrence Lewis, a nephew of General Washington, whose wife, born Eleanor Park Custis, was the granddaughter of Mrs. Washington, and the adopted daughter of the great President. He accepted the invitation, and in the autumn of 1815 set out for Major Lewis' country seat, Woodlawn, which had been a part of Washington's plantation, near Mt. Vernon. Here he was cordially received and remained as a tutor in the family until June, 1816. It was during this period that he obtained permission from General Bushrod Washington, who inherited the papers of his distinguished uncle, to take whatever letters he might choose from General Washington's voluminous correspondence, provided only that he would leave copies in their stead. The result was that he came into possession of some fifteen hundred invaluable autograph letters. Many of these were included in the three sets of the Signers, which he completed. There is a general opinion that the idea of making a collection of the autographs of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence originated with Dr. Sprague and undoubtedly he was the first to complete his set. It was his enthusiasm, too, which kindled in Mr. Tefft desire to make his collection of Signers' autographs complete.

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In Rev. Thomas Raffles, D. D., LL. D., of Liverpool, England, Dr. Sprague inspired (about 1828) desire to make the remarkable collection of the Signers, which passed upon the death of Dr. Raffles into the possession of Honorable T. Stamford Raffles, his son. This collection was bound in a beautiful volume which its owner valued almost as much as he would the famous Koh-i-noor.

Another early collector, was Mrs. Eliza H. Allen of Providence, R. I., the only woman who ever succeeded in gathering a complete set of the Signers. She died August 30th, 1873 and her collection of the Signers was in

The finest set known, embracing fifty-four (all but two) autograph-letters, and including the only autograph-letter of Thomas Lynch, Jr., in existence, is now in the Lenox library, New York, to which institution it has been entrusted by Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet of New York. Dr. Emmet, a descendant of that Robert Emmet who was one of Ireland's national heroes, was born near Charlottesville, Virginia, May 29th, 1828, where his father, John T. Emmet, was professor of chemistry and natural history in the University of Virginia. Dr. Emmet has long been ranked among the ablest members of the medical profession in New York City, but it is as an autograph collector that he stands pre-eminent. He began the collection of autographs in general at the early age of twelve, and started the forma