Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, D.T. [N.D.]) 1875-1878, 1877-05-04
TheAnction Season.

The Auction Season.
The auction fever has broken out as us
ual, though with more that usual violence,
and is devastating happy households all
over the city. Awoman on Center ave-
nue. went out one day last week, at o:3o
a. M, with an umbrella, a look of deter
.mination, and book of auction-sale adj
vertisements; she got home at6:l5 P M,
tired, snappish, hungry, and splashed
with mud up to the ears. She had two
china vases, one with chip out of the
lip that you wouldn't notice much if you
turned the reverse side Of the vase to the
front, and the other cracked, but not
enough to show; also. eight Mulberry
dinner plates and soup-ladle of the same
sort. She had paid ninty cents for the
vases-she wouldn't have given more
than sixty, only Fright ola thing with
d anew hat wanted them, and she the
(house wife) was resolved that she, (the
Fright) shouldn't have them-and they
were worth 81 when they were new, if
they were worth cent, while she had
secured the plates and ladle at a dead
bargain for eighty-three cents. "a ladle
like that" she said, "costs SIPS, and
most Of the plates are sound, and as there
are always things of this pattern being
sold At auction sales we shall be able to
put together colored dinner set for next
to nothing white dishes are so common
and look SO like hotel" Onthe whole,
she estimated her saving $1,o5, which,
she SAID, was the equivalent Of nearly six
dollars year,, "a sum not to be despised
in these hard times. BY judicious cross
examination her husband educed from
her the facts that she had spent IS cents
for car-fare, and 80 cents for lunch; she
had received bad halt. f.dollar from some
one, she couldn't say where, when, or
how; her pocket-book had been stolen
luckily it was an old one, and she car
ried her money in the bosom of her dress,
all but her small change, say sixty or sew
enty cents,) and her dress was ruined SO
that it would take $1,so to clean it.
Oh, and she had forgotten her umbrella
at some of the houses where she went
that was $3,25. Without making any
allowance for her time, therefore, she had
saved $1,o5 at direct expenditure of ST..
Here, of course, she burst into tears, and
S8Iu THAI IkI16 was tdaA oiA~ SsSA
got, and if it wasn't for the children, ETC.,
till her husband rePented end apologized
abjectly, and they rang for the girl to re-
move the bargains, and the girl fell down
the basement stairs with them and srnasn-
ed every blessed one Of them with noise
like Hell-Gate explosion. s2
She was more unfortunate than pru-
dent housewife on the North Side who
returned one evening last week tired but
triumphant, with the intelligence that
she had just bought what she had been
looking for for months, a sideboard to fit
into certain niche in the dining-1oom.
When she saw it she knew at a glance
that 1t was the very thing she had want
ed so long 1t was a little scratched and
bruised, she said, but you always had to
expect that in goods you bougt at an auc-
ton, and the looking-glass over the top
was smashed, but it wouldn't cost very
much to have "a new one put in, and with
little varnish and new hinges for the
door that was falling off, it would look as
good as new, if not better. "What shap-
ed thing is it?' asked her husband, care
lessly. 90, something like that hideous
old determination we used to have here,
but larger and not SO heavy looking.
There is no comparison between the two.
I could hardly believe that got it as
cheap as I did-eighteen dollars A
cold sweat of horrible suspicion broke out
all over that husbands back, but, clasp
ing his hands over his forehead, as if to
shut out some terrible idea he restrained
himself and muttered: "No, no, it lean
not be- At that moment the sideboard
arrived, and after doing good deal of
miscellaneous damage to itself, the gate,
the front steps, the ditto door, and the
knuckles of her husband. and the express
man, was landed in the dining room. So
soon as the husband had bound up his
knuckles, replaced his bursted shirt-collar
with another one, and tapered down his
profanity to comparatively small and
mild form, he took a square look at the
bargain, and then, with a shrek OF dis
pair, yelled: cit is! it's! knew that
dark presage musts be true. Maria" he
added, with frenzied laugh, as if his
reason was tottering on its throne; "Marla
its your own sideboard! Here's our ad-
dress on the back that we painted on 1t
when we moved here from Kalamazoo.
It was the same sideboard which, by rea-
son fits being an eye-sore and general
inconvenience, the prudeut housewife
had sold at an auction-room the year be-
fore for $1e,6o, and it was just in as good
order as when she sold it, only the mir
ror was smashed, one door was off, two
drawer-knobs were missing, and the paint
was all badly scratched.-Ch'eag0 1ar-
6une.
Dull Boys.
Don't be discouraged. Slow growth
is often sure growth. Some minds are
like the Norwegian pines. They are slow
IN growth, but they are striking their
-,o%c Io>o Come of tho oroa tesf rron