TREASURE HUNTING

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 20

TREASURE HUNTING

STRANGE QUESTS IN THE BEITISH MUSEUM.

It Is aTcommon impression that the British Museum, with its awesome galleries, and it* reading xooa, where to sneeze once is indiscreet and to sneeze twice is inviting trouble, takes no heed of the vanities and the hope* of mankind. But it. is now revealei that it is used by treasure"hunters and. those who are convinced that they: Have been swindled by Fate out of great title and inheritances. ; . Mr. John Gibbons, who has spent the last 20 years in the reading room, has been asked to make many queer searches. He tells, in the "Cornhill Magazine," how a man came to him demanding every reference to the possi-. bility of gold in a particular part,of North Russia that could be found in four days. .For those four days money didn't count. But, after that, no "finds" wonld be of the slightest iise. Then there was the elderly man who, over 50 years ago, had been casually struck with a short poem —somewhere. : It might have been printed'in a paper, a book, or a magazine, but he did not know. "Half a century later he. remembered just two lines, and wanted the rest. Wanted it badly, and was ready to pay for perhaps weeks of: research. Why, I,never knew. - But"I am glad I was able to find it) and in just two days. It was' sheer good luck." . .. •■:■ ■"y > Another client was the- man who wanted to discover exactly: how the Abyssinian Church keeps its Sunday. For years he had been joining and leavr ing almost every known denomination, always disagreeing with its rulings on this particular point. Mr. Gibbon* let his mind at rest With the fee the client sent a very grateful letter, and proclaimed the Abyssinian faith the ■only true one. He was, he added, shortly taking his family, out to Abyssinia. ; There are people who ask "how to go about claiming St. Francis Drake's estates, which I have always heard from my grandfather were rightfully ours," and others who spend lots of money in unearthing their ancient rights. ' ••"•." "I once made the illuminating find that somebody's ancestors had once been entitled once a year to cut a farthings-worth of brushwood on a certain common. On the strength of that ancient and doubtful farthing the firm employing, me must have spent many gujj^s of time and trouble. I. take it that the revival of rights would have ensured some sort of claim to what had perhaps turned into valuable property." ■ . Of his fellow professional readers, MrXGibbons says: "What we all are outside the room, where we live, what on earth my neighbour is searching for, has for- 80 years been a perpetual puzzle to me. The Old gentleman popularly supposed to live in a common lodging-house may be the greatest of scholars under a rather unconventional tippearance; pr, again, he may be quite improperly collecting addresses for begging-letters. I never knew and I never shall know." • • '