A SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE.
IN one of the side streets of a city which fronts on Long Island Sound is to be found a curiosity-shop whose show-window challenges the attention of all lovers of the quaint and queer by its jumble of cracked and ancient porcelain, old-fashioned brasses and small articles of more or less valuable bric-à-brac. Inside, the three small rooms are crowded with sets of delft and willow china, old candlesticks, clocks, andirons, fenders, high-backed chairs and the like. The whole aspect of the place is shabby and dingy, and the antique furniture has no chance of showing either its worth or its dignity amid such surroundings; yet the traffic which goes on in this "curiosity-shop" has already brought a respectable fortune to the owner, and promises, if the rage for revivals of ancient fashions continues, to make him a capitalist. Knapp, as we will call this dealer in second-hand furniture and bric-à-brac, began his trade some five or six years ago. He was originally a tin-peddler, travelling up and down the country with his wagon, offering tin and glass ware in return for rags, feathers and old metals. Knapp probably had, to start with, a touch of that original genius which transmutes the most ordinary conditions of life into means of personal aggrandizement. He laid the stepping-stone to his fortune when it one day occurred to him to accept a piece of old-fashioned Wedgwood ware in return for half a dozen shining tins. It was an inspiration which he considered half a weakness, but he yielded to it, and afterward had cause to congratulate himself when he found an opportunity for disposing of the cup at a remunerative rate. This gave him an impulse of curiosity toward any heirlooms in the way of china and pottery to be found among the farmers' wives in the section of New England he traversed; and his activities soon had their reward. At that date the passion for ceramics was but just beginning to invade our cities, and not a suspicion of it stirred the minds of the good women who artlessly opened their cupboards and displayed their treasures of Worcester china and willow-ware to the ingratiating Knapp. No man in the world was ever better calculated to drive good bargains for himself, yet leave an impression on his victim's mind that the peddler's interest in a "sort of china which matched a set his grandmother used to have" was running away with his better judgment.
Knapp became shortly a most interesting personage to people who were making collections, and he attained, besides ingenuity, genuine taste and skill in detecting marks and discerning values. In a year he had as nice a knowledge of china and pottery as any one in the country, and if the farmers' wives were so much the poorer by the loss of what had been in the family for generations, they did not recognize their loss.
However, it was by old clocks and brass andirons and fenders that Knapp made his fortune. A gentleman asked him to procure him some old-fashioned articles of this sort, and the peddler at once went into the matter on speculation, and bought up all the old brasses he could find within a radius of fifty miles. These fenders and andirons were gladly parted with, growing rusty as they had been for years, and almost forgotten in garrets and cellars. New England farmers remember too distinctly the shiverings and burnings of their youth not to feel an insurmountable prejudice against open fires. So Knapp, whose wider knowledge made him master of the fact that this present generation, sickened of stoves and dreary black holes in the wall and burnt dead heat, and longing for some cheerful household centre, were restoring the old fireplaces and open fires, where the flames could leap and roar, and the logs burn and glow and smoulder,—Knapp, I say, humored this fancy by opening his shop and offering his old-fashioned fenders and andirons to the public. He had bought them at a mere song, and sold them again at a price so reasonable that any purchaser might be suited, yet still at a profit of five hundred to a thousand per cent.
Once started as a regular dealer, he went steadily on: his activity was incessant, and always productive. His energies seemed to have been shaped by an unerring and divining instinct. He found old sideboards, chests, wardrobes, brought from England two centuries ago, dropping to pieces in barns and cellars. He found an "almost priceless Elizabethan cabinet" serving as a hen-house in a farmer's barnyard, and another in a little better condition used as a receptacle for pies in his cellar. He bought them both for five dollars, had them "restored," and sold one for eight hundred and the other for five hundred dollars. It is true that this process of "restoration" was an expensive one, and in his next venture of the sort he demanded higher prices without offering articles so valuable or so unique. At present he is engaged in refurnishing a North River mansion of colonial times with suitable furniture and decorations, and will be handsomely rewarded for his pains. But he is too well known now to find rare and curious articles as freely parted with as they were a few years ago. Still, the hard times help him. Then, too, in New England old families are constantly passing away, and leaving what small possessions belonged to the last surviving maiden of the race to far-away relations. These possessions, consisting of good solid old furniture, are certain to become Knapp's if he finds anything desirable among them. He has been known to go to a house within twelve hours of the death of the last surviving member of the family, and offer to negotiate with a servant or friend of the deceased for a chair, table, clock or sideboard he coveted. I doubt if an auction of old furniture has occurred for four years within one hundred miles of him where he has not been the first and the most privileged buyer.
L.W.