st 17s. 6d.

Drawing-room curtains, elaborately wrought, at 8s. 6d. a
pair--cost 21s.'

The bargains, in short, as Messrs Shavelass and Swallowher observe,
are of such an astounding description, as 'to strike all who witness
them with wonder, amazement, and surprise;' and 'demand inspection
from every lady who desires to unite superiority of taste with genuine
quality and economy.'

The next is a remarkably neat envelope, with a handsomely embossed
border, bearing the words, 'ON ESPECIAL SERVICE' under the address,
and winged with a two-penny stamp. The enclosure is a specimen of fine
printing on smooth, thin vellum, in the form of a quarto catalogue,
with a deep, black-bordered title-page, emanating from the dreary
establishment of Messrs Moan and Groan, of Cypress Row. Here commerce
condescends to sympathy, and measures forth to bereaved and afflicted
humanity the outward and visible symbols of their hidden griefs. Here,
when you enter his gloomy penetralia, and invoke his services, the
sable-clad and cadaverous-featured shopman asks you, in a sepulchral
voice--we are not writing romance, but simple fact--whether you are to
be suited for inextinguishable sorrow, or for mere passing grief; and
if you are at all in doubt upon the subject, he can solve the problem
for you, if you lend him your confidence for the occasion. He knows
from long and melancholy experience the agonising intensity of wo
expressed by bombazine, crape, and Paramatta; can tell to a sigh the
precise amount of regret that resides in a black bonnet; and can match
any degree of internal anguish with its corresponding shade of colour,
from the utter desolation and inconsolable wretchedness of dead and
dismal black, to the transient sentiment of sorrowful remembrance so
appropriately symbolised by the faintest shade of lavender or French
gray. Messrs Moan and Groan know well enough, that when the heart is
burdened with sorrow, considerations of economy are likely to be
banished from the mind as out of place, and disrespectful to the
memory of the departed; and, therefore, they do not affront their
sorrowing patrons with the sublunary details of pounds, shillings, and
pence. They speed on the wings of the post to the house of mourning,
with the benevolent purpose of comforting the afflicted household.
They are the first, after the stroke of calamity has fallen, to mingle
the business of life with its regrets; and to cover the woes of the
pas