Stamp collecting--an avocation, not a passion

While in the library researching Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for governor of California, I ran across this on the "Topics of the Day" page of the August 25, 1934 Literary Digest:

Stamp-Collecting And an Old Story
Home-loving philatelists with a proper sense of proportion who believe that stamp-collecting may be fascinating enough, but that it has its place, were somewhat shocked to learn that one of the brethren recently "sold" his wife for $700. The $700 he used to buy more stamps.

Police uncovered this disturbing little drama in Hoboken, New Jersey, where, it seems, Richard Rost, postage-stamp dealer, and not much of a romanticist, turned over his wife, Hildegarde, thirty, and ten years her husband's junior, to a gentleman named Paul Herman, a stationary engineer. He first held out for $900, but Herman beat him down to $700. The three signed a legal document in a notary public's office, and all three were reported happy until Mr. Rost discovered, so he has charged, that his wife had stolen $175 worth of his stamps from him. It was this charge that landed all three in the county jail.

Mrs. Rost was bitter when her husband demanded that she return with him until the $175 was paid. She denied the charge that she had stolen the money and when Mr. Rost told her to go with him, she said, rather hysterically:

"I won't go back with you. I hate you! I hate you! You sold me!" Which, apparently, settled that, until Rost went around to the police and demanded satisfaction. The police then interviewed the neighbors and heard the story of the sale of Mrs. Rost.

All of which suggests that stamp-collecting may be more of an aid to domestic felicity as an avocation than as a passion.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
God's mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

--Brian Wren
This is a day of new beginnings, 1978, alt.
(1st 2 verses)