Ali Baba's Cave

NZ Truth, Issue 1192, 4 October 1928, Page 6

Ali Baba's Cave

ABOUT the only thing Masterton has against Albert Edward Thomas Baker Clemas is the lerigth of his name. That is because he is not the sort of man who seeks to occupy the public eye, nor does he move m ways meriting their pleasure or incurring their displeasure. By profession, an accountant — small and prosaic, with a beaming nod shielding reticence — he is accepted as such by the general public, and there his identification ends for most. But that is only the beginning. In slippers and smoke haze he is a traveller into the misty past, with the deeds, hopes and failures of dead races on his lips m words of authority. Those who have access 5 to his unpretentious home know its secret. They pass through a curtain and a low door into the cave of Aii Baba. Within, by dim light, are the crowded relics. of vanished, civilizatioris, treasures of India, China and the Maori, besides one of the largest' and finest collections of ancient Bibles m the world, their rare brothers owned by kings for a king's ransom. Some still dangle chains that tied them In monastries of Tibet for study by •hooded monks, just as their present possessor, pores over them now with the absorption of a devotee. Albert Clemas sits m his cave like an amiable' spider and sends out feelers beyond New Zealand for treasures further to grace liis room of wonders. He has known ships, "a grey mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking;" • The only pity is that he does not write more.