conducting a small business as a draper in an
eight-roomed house (including the shop) at
Somers Town. It soon passes from the dry,
unimaginative; unelastic phrases of the law, into
the rapturous vocabulary of the auction mart.
A little way down the bill, we come upon a
prominent ridge of type, describing, in glowing
terms, a magnificent-toned, full-sized walnut
piano. (The piano used to be of rosewood, but
walnut is now your only fashionable wear.)
Passing over a valley of small type, which
contains a brief mention of breakfast, dinner, and
tea services, easy chairs, matting, bedding,
kitchen utensils, &c. &c., we come upon another
series of large and small ridges devoted to
exquisite drawing-room suites in silk and velvet,
large-sized brilliant plate chimney-glass in
richly gilt carved wood frame, portfolios of
prints containing the choicest specimens of the
early masters, Arabian bedsteads, dining-room
suite in Spanish mahogany covered in the best
morocco leather, marble-slab and plate-glass
chiffonier, china vases, cut-glass lustres, spring
stuffed settees, noble telescope dining-table,
papier-mâché occasional chairs, superb ormolu
fourteen-day striking clock, fine oval loo-table,
and rich three-thread tapestry Brussels carpets.
Other ridges of type are devoted to other
similar articles, including oil and water colour
pictures, and a small cellar of well selected
wine; until Richard Jones, the small bankrupt
draper in the eight-roomed house (including the
shop) at Somers Town, is transformed into a
fraudulent Sardanapalus, feeding upon the
property of his creditors.

If the sale were of that extensive public
character which auction-mart proprietors always
lay claim to in their advertisements, it might,
perhaps, be worth the while of Richard Jones, a
bankrupt, to protest against such a gross
misrepresentation of his private life. As these
sales, however, are confined to the small business
connexion of a particular auctioneer, who has a
special reputation for selling furniture, as other
auctioneers have a special reputation for selling
books, or house property, or works of art; and
as two-thirds of the frequenters of these sales
are brokers, and professional purchasers (chiefly
Jews) who fully understand the trick of trade
legerdemain by which the furniture of an humble
eight-roomed house at Somers Town is swelled
into the contents of several well-appointed family
mansions; there is no occasion for Richard Jones,
a bankrupt, to trouble himself about his damaged
reputation, even if he follow his lost household
gods to their final place of sale. He will see
his well-worn chairs and couches; his table on
which he carved his children's dinner: his
looking-glass in which he shaved himself before his
bankruptcy; his sofa on which he slept over his
weekly paper on a Sunday afternoon; his pictures
of a stage-coach in full swing on a country road,
and a kitchen-table containing a loaf of bread, a
cut cheese, two onions, and a glass of ale, which
specimens of art were given him, as a marriage
present, by an uncle who was formerly in the
public line; he will see all these things, and
many others, that have cast off the familiar
household faces they once wore, and have put on
such a dusty, tied-up, packed, and lotted look,
that he will almost pass them by as utter
strangers amidst the crowd of console tables,
toilet services, Circassian cloth curtains, winged
wardrobes, and marble washstands that bewilder
him on every side. He will have no recollection
of ever being the possessor of a sweet-toned
harmonium, containing ten stops—clarionet,
flute, sourdine, bourdon, cor Anglais, grand jeu,
expression, tremulo, and two fortes; and yet he
will find this complicated instrument figuring
in the catalogue under the cover of his
bankrupt name. He will see the eager and
careful Israelite, who knows a good deal of
guile, going over the articles, one by one, with
the catalogue, the day before the sale; punching
beds that are not his beds, jumping upon sofas
(to try the springs) that are not his sofas, turning
up loo-tables (to examine the hinges) that
are not his tables, looking at the backs and fronts
of pictures that are not his pictures, and pinch-
ing all kinds of solid articles (as if they were
made of india-rubber) that never had a place in
his domestic castle, although his commercial
calamity has, in some way, forced them to a
premature, and bonâ fide sale.

When the hour arrives for the rostrum to be
mounted, he will find himself alluded to as a
person of considerable taste and judgment in
furnishing a house, although unfortunate in
conducting the ordinary operations of trade. He
will find that the two-thirds of professional
purchasers, including the eager and careful Israelite
who know a good deal of guile, are not in the
habit of paying the slightest attention to the
preliminary remarks of the auctioneer, and only
awake to a sense of business when the bidding
for the first lot has actively commenced. He will
find himself amongst an outer crust of private,
inexperienced bidders—bargain-hunters, furnishing
housekeepers, lodging-letters, and persons
about to marry. He will find that when this outer
crust of auction visitors is not tempted to make any
offers for the particular lot which the auctioneer
is dwelling upon, the inner circle of professional
purchasers—a banded society of brokers and
brokers' men—obtain, in most cases, an easy
bargain as their prey. When, however, the outer
crust of amateur bidders is moved to enter into
competition with the regular professional hands,
there is a murmur of savage opposition heard
running through the Israelites in front, and a
combination of brokers and purchasers upon
commission prevents the outsiders getting the
coveted article below the regular high broker
price. When the sale has reached the half-
way house—the small cellar of well-selected
wine—and tasting samples, with bread-and-cheese,
are being handed round for the refreshment of
the visitors, the bankrupt will have found that,
to purchase back even his own household gods
in the cheapest way, he must place himself in
the hands of a buyer upon commission, a broker,
or a broker's agent, generally one of the
Israelites, who know a good deal of guile. Trade-