retorts of the auctioneer, to the highest bidder,--and they will be
sadder, if not wiser, men than they were before. Such scenes should have
more effect on them than all the fine sermons on the vanities and
nothings of life ever preached. Sir Richard Steele, in his beautiful
paper, in the "Tatler," on "The Death of Friends," says, in speaking of
his mother's sorrow for his father's death, there was a dignity in her
grief amidst all the wildness of her transport that made pity the
weakness of his heart ever since; and perhaps it is owing to the
impressions I received at the first auction I ever attended that I am
now an inveterate sentimentalist.

How well I remember that auction! Looking back "through the dim posterns
of the mind" into the far-off days of my childhood, I see, among other
things, the large and comfortable mansion--it was the home of plenty and
the temple of hospitality--in which I passed some of the goldenest hours
of my boyhood. But the finest play has an end, and the sweetest feasts
and the merriest pastimes do not last forever. Very suddenly, indeed,
did my visits to that happy home cease. For my good friends of the
"great house"--the dearest old lady and the kindest and merriest old
gentleman that ever patted a little boy on the head--were both seized
(oh, woe the day!) by a terrible disease, and died in spite of all that
the great doctor from Boston did to cure them. The last time I entered
the dear old house was on a beautiful balmy summer morning; the birds
were singing as I have never heard them sing since, and all Nature
seemed as glad and exultant as if death, misfortune, and auctioneers
were banished from the world. I found there, in place of the late kind
host and hostess, a crowd--so they seemed to me--of rude and
coarse-minded people; and I saw the hateful red flag of the auctioneer
hanging over the door.