There must be an end even to the reminiscences of an antiquer. And my purpose, in this paper, has not been to excite a vain envy in the readers of the “Atlantic,”† but rather to invite them to antique, hereafter, in the hereafter, to espouse, if they will, that all-but-maiden fancy which has beguiled my leisured hours for twice two lustrums [forty years]. They, too, if they please, may be antiquers ahead instead of back. ———— † This essay, with others of Mr. Twitchett’s charming papers, inevitably first saw the light in the periodical which, most happily, reflects the spirit of the antiquer. My great discovery of my own talent for this field of art came to me, seemingly, by chance; but, after all, who dare affirm that such things owe their origin to blind accident, that there is behind events so pregnant no purposeful and actuating Cause? Not I, of all men. I say seemingly. So be it. The way of it was this: Workmen had demolished a decaying building which stood, in those days, within a few squares of my father’s humble cottage. With other boys of the vicinity I had looked on, fascinated by the appeal which wanton destruction must exert on youth. Like them I had dreams, too, of buried treasure below those venerable timbers, and burrowed hopefully among the litter which the wreckers left behind. One of my playmates after another kicked aside, in these explorings, a metal object. I found it, and, inspired by that inherited passion for the antique which has ruled my days, held it, examined it. A cry of joy escaped me: I detected, along one of its blunt edges, the corrosions of what seemed to me might have been spilled blood. I looked more closely still, crouching, now, shielding my treasure from the glances of the bigger boys, able, if they guessed the nature of my trove, to snatch it from me and make it theirs instead. I slunk away. In safe seclusion I looked again. There could be no doubt. To that sinister rusted edge stout, short hairs still adhered! I thrust the precious relic inside my shirt and sped homeward. In my ingenuous, artless youth I made sure that I had found a token of some ancient deed of blood; that luck had led me to a trophy such as no other youth in all Yonkers—at that day—could hope to possess. I hid it lovingly below my Sabbath garments in my bureau drawer, and gloated over it, in private, when the thing seemed safe. [Illustration: PLATE II MAGNIFICENT OLD FLAT-FRONT EARLY NEW JERSEY SIDEBOARD DISCOVERED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN AN OBSCURE PART OF NEWARK ] Inevitably, I was taken in the act. My father found me fondling my relic and took it roughly from me. “What you got there, Eb?” He held it gingerly, for his profession had, of course, made him fastidious. He was always careful of his hands, my father. He always washed them with soap, before coming home to meals, even after shaving a dozen customers! My treasure displeased his cleanly instinct, I could see.