The Editor Visits Columbiana
 

k UERY to the reader: have you ever fallen backwards
or forwards in time? Have you ever stepped through a
/magic looking-glass? Or fallen asleep in the mountains,
and awakened twenty years later with a long white beard?

Writers are all the time taking their readers on these trips. The
other day we went on one ourself. We simply walked into Room
no in Low Memorial Library, intent on writing a description
of the Columbiana Collection, and suddenly we were falling out
of the humdrum present very much as Alice did at the beginning
of her Advejttures when she tumbled into the rabbit-hole.

Alice's rabbit-hole, if you remember, was fitted with cupboards
and bookshelves, and there were maps and pictures on the wall.
Room no looked like that. But filling the shelves, instead of
jam pots, were all sorts of interesting memorabilia. Luckily, the
Curator of Columbiana, Halsey Thomas, was falling down this
particular rabbit-hole too, so we had someone who could explain
about things which caught our interest.

Here is a report on what we saw.

We were falling backwards in time, so memorabilia of recent
years came first. We noticed Nicholas Murray Butler's Oxford
cap and gown, and an ancient mahogany secretary with several
shelves of books which used to be in his bedroom. We picked out
one of the books, Rollo's Tour in Europe, and read on the flyleaf
the inscription: "N. Murray Butler from his uncle Chalmers, for
his sixth birthday, 1868." A basket from his office desk was there
too, marked "Attention at Leisure." However, Dr. Butler "at
leisure" must have been a rare phenomenon, judging by the yards
of filing cabinets containing his personal correspondence.

Next we spotted an extraordinary-looking object: a flexible
tube about six feet long terminating in a flaring brass trumpet. It
looked like a cross between a hookah and a Tibetan prayer horn,

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