‘What’s bid for this splendid sofa?’ he began.
‘I’ll give you fifteen dollars for it,’ said I; ‘it’s not worth more than that, for it’s dreadfully abused.’
‘Fifteen dollars! fifteen dollars! only fifteen dollars for this beautiful sofa!’ he went on; and a man next to me bid seventeen dollars. I let the auctioneer cry the last bid for a few minutes, until I saw he was likely to knock it down.
‘Twenty dollars!’ said I, ‘and that’s as much as I’ll go for it.’
The other bidder was deceived by this as to the real value of the sofa, for it did look dreadfully disfigured by the dust and dirt, and consequently the sofa was knocked off to me.”
“That was admirably done, indeed!” said Mrs Courtland, with a bland smile of satisfaction at having obtained the elegant piece of furniture at so cheap a rate. “And it’s so near a match, too, for the sofa in our front parlour.”
This scene occurred at the residence of a merchant in this city, who was beginning to count his fifty thousands. Let us look at the other side of the picture.
On the day previous to this sale, a widow lady with one daughter, a beautiful and interesting girl about seventeen, were seated on a sofa in a neatly furnished parlour in Hudson-street. The mother held in her hand a small piece of paper, on which her eyes were intently fixed; but it could readily be perceived that she saw not the characters that were written upon it.
“What is to be done, ma?” at length asked the daughter.
“Indeed, my child, I cannot tell. The bill is fifty dollars, and has been due, you know, for several days. I haven’t got five dollars, and your bill for teaching the Miss Leonards cannot be presented for two weeks, and then it will not amount to this sum.”