I suppose I might have taken down one of the heavy volumes of that vast encyclopedia which so formidably thwarted youth’s enterprise though advertised to foster it, and have read therein much of what was told me in less pedantic and less academic style by the major. If I have seemed to linger beyond the limits of a preface it is not that I started out to write a eulogy of Major Kyttyle, but rather that in what I am saying I hope there can be found some hint of the truest sort of collecting, the noblest sort of a collector--one who uses his collection as a preacher uses his text, happily discoursing to attentive ears and not shutting himself up with his treasures, like a medieval monk of old with book in cell. The good major went to his rest long since. We had supposed him out of the land of India, not only because we gleaned from his stories that he had spent long years in service there, but also because of his attachment for the arts of India, which he seemed to hold above those of Persia. But when his grave was marked, the granite shaft provided in his will as a last luxury bore simply this legend, “_Kyttyle of Khorassan_.” Mrs. Minch was jubilant. “What did I tell you? A Persian! One never knows what with these mysterious people.” It is only within the last half-dozen years that the arts of India and of Persia have attracted much attention with Americans in general. Happily, we are out of that stage where everything Asiatic is classed as either “Turkish” or “Chinese.” The field here for collection is a broad one and naturally embraces a myriad of objects. Private collections and public collections of the arts of Persia and of India, including those of Ceylon, are growing apace. Good things and fine things are appearing in public sales and are still to be picked up in antique-shops by the discriminating one who has taken the trouble to study the subject. Fortunately, the collector now has at hand such excellent books for reference as the various works by Ananda Coomaraswamy, Vincent Smith, Martin, Birdwood, Havell, Hendley, and others. Of Persian objets d’art an anoymous writer in the article on Persia in “The Everyman Encyclopædia” has said: