COLLECTIONS--LEO'S LETTER--NURSE BUNDLE AND SIR LIONEL If Nurse Bundle hoped that when I went to school an end would be put to the "collections" which troubled her tidy mind, she was much deceived.

Neither Leo nor I were bookworms, and we were not by any means so devoted as some boys to games and athletics.

But for collections of all kinds we had a fancy that almost amounted to mania.
Our natural history manias in their respective directions came upon us like fevers.

We "sickened" at the sight of somebody else's collection, or because we had been reading about butterflies, or birds' eggs, or water-plants, as the case might be.

When "the complaint" was "at its height," we lived only for specimens; we gave up leisure, sleep, and pocket-money to our collection; we made notes and memoranda in our grammars and lexicons that had no classical reference.