Field Note 001

Priscilla from Tim - July 1, 1918

I held the book in my hands a few times before noticing the inscription.

I'm at the beginning of my collecting journey, which has become my reselling journey, which is well on its way to becoming my repair and restoration journey. At first, the only thing I knew about inscriptions was that they lower collector value.

I didn't pay them much mind beyond cataloguing them. Which books had a scribble in the front? A name. A date. A note. Something I would need to disclose when I listed the book on eBay.

This was the book that changed my mind.

Pan and His Pipes by Katherine Dunlap Cather, copyright 1916.

The date caught my eye before anything else. In the corner of the blank paper before the title page, in neat cursive, was the faint pencil scrawl:

Priscilla.
From Tim Eaton.
July 1, 1918.

A picture begins to form, right?

This was a gift for a child. She might have been interested in mythology, in music, or perhaps someone in her life was trying to steer her toward reading more frequently. The details evade me. The idea of a book as a time capsule does not.

Any used book could have had a number of lives before the thin corners of its pages wear a little more beneath my fingers. As a lover of stories, I adore books. They hold the stories written inside them, but they also carry stories of their own.

Having that truth become so tangible - really noticing it and holding such a relic in my hands - was a revelation.

This book had spent more than a century entertaining, teaching, and shaping young readers. For the first time, the reality of that history was no longer abstract.

It made me emotional.

Working with children for nearly a decade has reinforced for me how fleeting childhood is. This book crossed through small hands during that constant transition of youth. Perhaps it was loaned among friends. Perhaps it was beloved and passed down through generations of the same family.

Perhaps Priscilla remembered it.

Perhaps she forgot it entirely.

I will never know.

What I do know is that eventually, this book fell into my lap. It was only a step away from ending up in the dump, buried at the bottom of a box of donated books that would be discarded.

Instead, I noticed it. And now I have the opportunity to pass it along to someone who will treasure it. Because it is old. Because they cherish its history. Because they collect books like it. Because they want to read it to a child of their own and breathe new life into it.

The book will continue its legacy.

I cannot fathom how lucky I am to have held it for a while.