William Bailey panicked when
he realized he had accidentally
left a leather portfolio containing a Picasso
print, and a painting by Sophie
Matisse worth $6,000 in a New York subway
station. Bailey, a framer and art
instructor had been taking the portfolio
downtown when he put it down while
waiting for his train. When Bailey arrived in
Columbus Circle, he realized he
had left the artwork behind. Though he hailed a
cab and hurried back to the
station, the portfolio and the artwork had
disappeared. Bailey said, “It was
like a Hitchcock movie. I broke into a
tremendous sweat.”
After Bailey searched the
entire area, he collapsed in tears
in front of a nearby church. He plastered the
area with posters, begging anyone
with information to call and promised a $1,000
reward. Bailey received so many
calls, his voice mail stopped working. he says
the calls covered everything
from people calling him awful names to people
telling him they were praying for
him. Three days later, Bailey received the call
he was waiting for from Paul
Abi Boutros, a book vendor from West 80th
Street.
Boutros says a homeless man
apparently brought the portfolio
up from the subway platform to the street.
Boutros noticed it propped against
the wall of a Bagel shop. When it had been there
a couple of hours, he asked
the man if he planned to keep it. The homeless
man said. “Do whatever you want
with it.” Boutros says, “ I liked the leather—I
liked the portfolio—so I took
it.”
Boutros’ wife read the story
about the missing paintings in
the paper the following Sunday and realized what
her husband had found. He
says, “I thought they’re very good pictures, but
I don’t want them because
they’re not mine.”
When he received the case
back, Bailey compared his ecstatic
feeling to the brilliant colors in the Matisse
painting. He gave Boutros the
$1,000 reward. As an added gift, Bailey gave the
street vendor the leather
portfolio he admired too.
—www.nynewsday.com; Lost
Picasso, Matisse Recovered; by
Melanie Lefkowitz, June 2, 2003. Illustration by
Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell.
Luke 15:8-10 NIV “Or suppose
a woman has ten silver coins
and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep
the house, and search carefully
until she finds it? And when she finds it, she
calls her friends and neighbors
together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have
found my lost coin’ In the same
way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the
presence of God over one sinner who
repents.”
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
A team of British treasure
hunters found a fortune worth of
coins dating from the 15th to 17th centuries
using metal detectors to search a
field in England. The team found a couple of
coins and then asked the owner of
the field for permission to search the 15-acre
field. Over the next three days
they found 1,061 silver hammered coins
believed to date back over 400 years. An
appraiser estimated the coins could bring as
much as $130,000 at auction. There
has been no explanation as to why the coins
were in that area. –Jim L. Wilson
and Jim Sandell
“The kingdom of heaven is
like treasure, buried in a field,
that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy
he goes and sells everything he
has and buys that field.
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