fare,
which is at this part very wide. Auctioneers were here busily engaged in
the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of
produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of
linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester
long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is
a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering,
consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with
wondrous impudence and pertinacity, dispensing, all the while he is
selling, the most fulsome flattery or the grossest abuse on those who
stand around. One of these loquacious animals was holding forth to a
crowd, just below the _Courier and Inquirer_ newspaper office, where
the street widens, as a preliminary introduction to the sale of a
quantity of linen goods that had been damaged at a recent fire in the
neighbourhood. I could not help admiring the man's tact. Fixing his eyes
on an individual in a white dress, with an enormous Leghorn hat on his
head, who was apparently eagerly listening, while smoking a cigar, to
the harangue, he suddenly exclaimed, "There now is Senator Huff, from
the State of Missouri, he heerd of this vendue a thousand mile up river,
and wall knows I'm about to offer somethin woth having; look at him, he
could buy up the fust five hunderd folks hed cum across anywhar in this
city, and what's more, he's a true patriot, made o' the right kinder
stuff, I guess."

He followed up the eulogium at great length, and after liberally
dispensing "soft soap" on the listeners, declared the auction had
commenced. I stood by for some minutes, gazing around and watching the
operations, and was not long in discovering that Senator Huff kept
running up the articles by pretended bids, and was evidently in league
with him, in fact a confederate. This auctioneer was the very emblem of
buffoonery and blackguardism; the rapidity with which he repeated the
sums, supposed by the bystanders to be bid, the curt yet extravagant
praise bestowed on his wares, and his insulting and unsparing remarks if
a comment were made on the goods he offered, or if the company did not
respond in bidding, stamped him as one of the baser sort of vulgarians.

Sales of this description were going on in every direction, and the
street rang with the stentorian voices of the sellers. Many of these
were mock auctions, as an observer of any intelligence would detect, and