Mathom: adapted from Anglo-Saxon máðm "treasure, precious thing.” That which clutters hobbit holes, not great art, but trinkets passed from home to home, birthday gifts re-gifted.
Elizabeth Goudge, in A City of Bells, wrote that the vocation of the bookseller is greater than that of the writer, because: “A writer has to spin his work out of himself and the effect upon the character is often disastrous. It inflates the ego. Now your bookseller sinks his own ego in the thousand different egos that he introduces one to the other.” I’m a writer; ergo an egoist. But like the bookseller, an essayist threads together connections to help his reader meet with new minds—can one do the same in a Substack post?