HOARDERS CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 317, 20 July 1945, Page 24

HOARDERS CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES

c¢ ERE is a good opportunity to get rid of a lot of junk; why we keep all this stuff, I don’t know." Everybody who has moved from one flat or house to another has made this remark with varying degrees of determination, but when it comes to doing the throwing out, there is always a counter: "No, I wouldn’t get rid of THAT; you never know when it might come in handy." And so you generally end up more or less where you started. But long-forgotten trifles dug up during a move are sometimes interesting. Tired of roping-up dozens of small

boxes during two shifts, over long distances, in one year, we crammed all our goods into two large cases, throwing out anything we_ could not possibly need. All those old dance programmes, with the little coloured pencil on a string, the old photographs which always seem to betray an adolescent desire to look ‘older and = "more mature than we are;

anda the more recent snaps when we kept on our hats to hide the thinning thatch -out they went. A good many people are potentially, and actually, hoarders. They keep for years anything from impossible wedding presents to the quaint little series of Chinese boxes, one within another, until the smallest has to be picked up by a pair of tweezers. A Queer Little Book * Something of this sort was at the bottom of the old tin trunk that still stood in the back rogm, unroped from its last trip. It was a small book, two inches square, bound in leather and with the following inscription: "Natural History of Forty-Eight Quadrupeds, with Elegant Engravings from Drawings by Alfred Mills, London. Printed for Darton, Harvey, and Darton and J. Harris, St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1815." This book opens with the information that "the horse is a mild, inoffensive creature, living entirely upon vegetable food, never attacking other animals and, when attacked himself, rather seeking safety in flight than by defence. . After death his skin becomes a valuable leather and his hooves are made into glue. An animal so useful should be treated with kindness and never driven or loaded beyond his strength." It runs in this fashion through the habits of all sorts of animals, ending with the home life of the long-eared bat. Sentimental expressions, after a lanes of years, produce a variety of emotions, with amusement generally in the ascendancy. When, not so long ago, carpenters were repairing some school classrooms in the South Island, they found, behind the panelling, lists of names scribbled on pieces of paper which had been screwed ¢

up and thrust through the crevices. Some bore sketches purporting to represent the features of school-masters; others linked the names of boy and girl pupils, hinting at romance, or boldly proclaiming it. Again, while workmen were demolishing the dressing-sheds of a public swim-ming-bath, a heap of old coins, including a half-sovereign, dated 1869, came to light. One wonders what happened, years ago, to some innocent clerk or shop assistant when important business documents were lost, to be discovered a long while afterwards, caught in a shaft of a shop’s pneumatic carrying system. The

men doing the repairing handed them over to the management, to whom, of course, they meant nothing. Then it was reported that while alterations were being made to a suburban letter posting box some old mail was discovered wedged in a splinter of wood in the dark interior. Sometimes, for sentimental or scien-

tific reasons, articles are put out of sight and mind on purpose, as in the case of the day’s newspaper .which has been placed under many a foundation stone during the formal laying ceremony. But, six years ago, America went one better, sending a collection of articles on a 5000 years’ journey through time. Addressed to savants of the year 6939, a "time capsule," containing an assortment of characteristically 20th century objects, was buried at the bottom of a well during the New York World’s Fair. Engineers bored a narrow shaft 50ft. deep, lined it with double steel tubing and stoppered it with concrete and sand. The capsule, a cartridge 7/ft. long, was made of Westinghouse nickel and silver alloy copper, lined with pyrex glass, emptied of air and filled ‘with inert oxygen. Among the objects that went into it were a woman’s hat, a razor, tin-opener, fountain- pen, pencil, tobacco pouch, tobacco, cigarettes, camera, eyeglasses, toothbrush, cosmetics, textiles, metals and alloys, coal, building materials, synthetic plastics, seeds, dictionaries, language texts, magazines, and other written records on microfilm. To make reasonably sure that archaeologists of 6939 would know of the treasure consigned to them, books of record were sent to the world’s leading libraries, telling them how to calculate the date when the capsule should be opened, by use of the Gregorian, Chinese, Jewish, Mohammedan and Shinto calendars, and by astronomical time if no calendars survive. Also given were the exact latitude and longitude of the capsule’s well, calculated to within less

than an inch.

E.