When some of my friends,
whom I had taken to a favorite junk shop, felt after two hours of
purchase and exploration that they must not keep me waiting any longer,
the man, in his eagerness to make a few more sales, exclaimed: "Let her
wait;
her time ain't wuth nothin'!"
At an auction last summer, one man told me of a very venerable lantern,
an heirloom in his first wife's family,
so long, measuring nearly a
yard with his hands. I said I should like to go with him to see it, as I
was making a collection of lanterns. He looked rather dazed, and as I
turned away he inquired of my friend "if I wusn't
rather--" She never
allowed him to finish, and his lantern is now mine.
People seem to have but little sentiment about their associations with
furniture long in the family.
The family and a few intimate friends usually sit at the upper windows
gazing curiously on the crowd, with no evidence of feeling or pathetic
recollections.
I lately heard a daughter say less than a month after her father's
death, pointing to a small cretonne-covered lounge: "Father made me that
lounge with his own hands when I's a little girl. He tho't a sight on't
it, and allers kep' it 'round. But my house is full now. I ain't got no
room for't." It sold for twelve cents!
Arthur Helps says that human nature craves, nay
enjoys, tragedy; and
when away from dramatic representation of crime and horrors and sudden
death, as in this quiet country life, the people gratify their needs in
the sorrows, sins, and calamities that befall their neighbors.
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