Rest assured, Cassandra, that the concept "collector of people" has no single word denotation in any language. "Collector-of-souls", as is described the hobby of the Devil, might - but a single word describing the act of gathering a group of selected people about you as you go through life doesn't exist, otherwise R. A. Lafferty who delights in the use of obscure words in languages live or dead, would have used it in this paragraph from his great Ktistic novel novel ARRIVE AT EASTERWINE.

"The big thing is never to be found in an individual person." I issued.
"The big thing is found only in the intersection of persons."
"You are wrong!" he stated so thunderously as to partly convince me. "The great thing is found only in the individual, in me. The soul is found only in me. That which is found in the contusion of persons is something else. It feels, it smarts, it almost seems to have a life. But it is only a bruising, not a soul."
(And this man was proforming certain indignities within me, finding my ultimate workings.)
"Man is only a man when he is a limb of mankind." I issued.
"Blothering Bosh, you little collector of miniaturized persons, you work too minutely even to see the big thing." he growled. "Man is only man when he rises prodigiously above mankind."

Now.
If we only had a single word for those most fortunate people who are blissfully mutually collected.

Wait! I think Kurt Vonnegut did. He called it a "duprass". Yeah, that was it...a "duprass.".

Last edited by themilum; 09/02/06 08:12 AM.