. I don't mean the love of getting cheap things, by which one
understands showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious articles, bearing
certain apparent resemblances to better things. All really sensible
people are quite superior to that sort of cheapness. But those
fortunate accidents, which put within the power of a man things really
good and valuable for half or a third of their value, what mortal
virtue and resolution can withstand? My friend Brown has a genuine
Murillo, the joy of his heart and the light of his eyes, but he never
fails to tell you, as its crowning merit, how he bought it in South
America for just nothing,--how it hung smoky and deserted in the back
of a counting-room, and was thrown in as a makeweight to bind a
bargain, and, upon being cleaned turned out a genuine Murillo; and
then he takes out his cigar, and calls your attention to the points in
it; he adjusts the curtain to let the sunlight fall just in the right
spot; he takes you to this and the other point of view; and all this
time you must confess that, in your mind as well as his, the
consideration that he got all this beauty for ten dollars adds lustre
to the painting. Brown has paintings there for which he paid his
thousands, and, being well advised, they are worth the thousands he
paid; but this ewe lamb that he got for nothing always gives him a
secret exaltation in his own eyes. He seems to have credited to
himself personally merit to the amount of what he should have paid for
the picture. Then there is Mrs. Croesus, at the party yesterday
evening, expatiating to my wife on the surprising cheapness of her
point-lace set. "Got for just nothing at all, my dear!" and a circle
of admiring listeners echoes the sound. "Did you ever hear anything
like it? I never heard of such a thing in my life;" and away sails
Mrs. Croesus as if she had a collar composed of all the cardinal
virtues. In fact, she is buoyed up with a secret sense of merit, so
that her satin slippers scarcely touch the carpet. Even I myself am
fond of showing a first edition of "Paradise Lost" for which I gave a
shilling in a London bookstall, and stating that I would not take a
hundred dollars for it. Even I must confess there are points on which
I am mortal.

But all this while my wife sits on her roll of carpet, looking into my
face for approbation, and Marianne and Jenny are pouring into my ear a
running fire of "How sweet! How lovely! Just like that one of Mrs.
Tweedleum's!"

"A