Cabinet of mysteries

 The box, grimy with dust and crushed on one edge, must have been sitting on a shelf in my father's garage for a number of decades. It looked like the kind of box that had been made in the 70s and sold at Hill's Stationery shop: sturdy, with a glued-on label that affirmed its contents had once been a raft of business-sized envelopes. Yellowed by time, the container was thicker and sturdier than its modern counterpart. It was something any generation might frugally repurpose. But it had clearly outlived its usefulness.

As if it knew my plans, the box wouldn't budge when I tried to slide it toward me. A task I had assumed would take only a minimal effort before I could inspect what was inside and unceremoniously pitch it and its contents into the great beyond. Which, for my purposes, was a forty-thousand-yard dumpster I'd rented to haul away all the things my father had owned that had somehow avoided eviction all these years. I increased pressure, and the box suddenly came loose, bringing with it a chip of paint from the shelf where it had stuck.

When I tipped up the lid, I found a leather-bound book tooled with flowers and smelling of age and must.

The book held sepia-toned photographs affixed to cards ... professional portraits, some of which bore the imprint of studios with Spindle and Collar City addresses. Someone had carefully inserted each photograph into the ornate windows of album's thick pages. They seemed remarkably preserved despite the fact that some had shifted over the years, their edges out of alignment, where they'd come unglued.

Known as Cabinet Cards, (I learned from Wikipedia) this style of photography hit the height of its popularity in the 1880s and 90s. And, as the name implies, were intended for display inside glass curio cabinets. The cards, however, fell out of favor by the 1920s once consumer market cameras and mass-produced picture postcards came on the scene.

As I flipped through the book, I met some unfamiliar faces: Men with wild hair and even wilder beards, the cut of their clothes suggested they were professionals, although some wore the garments of the priesthood; Women of all ages, some looking dour as they perched on the edge of an ornate settee, while others gazed sweetly into the camera as they stood wasp-waisted in layered skirts; One person, sitting ramrod straight, donning tartan togs and a high-tufted hairdo, defied gender typing. There were even a few children: girls with their long hair in bows, wearing straight-line dresses that reached their ankles.

As I continued to study the faces, it seemed entirely possible that at least some of these beautiful Victorian strangers had come from the old country only by mail. Perhaps, they were tucked into letters and sent by airmail half a world away. Just like my father's sister reported to have seen herself and her siblings on a mantle in Ireland when she made a pilgrimage there to meet our Irish cousins. Like these images those real-life relatives were essentially strangers she only knew about from reading letters traded between her late parents and theirs.

My aunt didn’t recognize anyone either. Nor did anyone in my mother's branch of the family.

Perhaps it was just a silent hobby of someone now long departed; A collection of paper wonders that would take up space on a shelf (albeit in a newer shoebox) destined to confound its next discoverer. A mystery worth living on in posterity.