Man finds 19th-century periodicals

PHILADELPHIA - An antiques collector stumbled upon a Civil War-era rarity that was about to suffer the same fate as yesterday's trash.

Antiques collector Stephen Burns discovered that a pile of periodicals intended for the garbage heap turned out to be dozens of issues of"Little Pilgrim," a children's reader published in Philadelphia in the 1850s and '60s. The periodical featured fiction, poetry, riddles and other items for young readers.

Burns was at an auction when a bidder bought a box of books, then offered him the primers in the bottom of the box. They would have just been thrown away, Burns said.