Only too frequently the keen desire for a bargain has really been the cause of the disappointment.

People who would in the ordinary affairs of life scorn to take advantage of an ignorant man, seem only too delighted at being able to "pick up" a bargain from a "little man in the country" who was thought to be wanting in knowledge, and they are very indignant at finding that it is their own knowledge, not only of furniture but of human nature, that was so lamentably deficient. I remember, a great many years ago, a certain dealer had sold for several thousand pounds some furniture, china and bronzes to a gentleman who had been Lord Mayor of the City of London, on the misrepresentation that the goods were the property of the widow of a French officer who had been killed in the Franco-German war, and who, being in urgent need of money, was obliged to sacrifice her property for whatever sum she could obtain. The purchaser thereupon made offers of sums which would have been ridiculously small had the articles been genuine, but which were about three times the value of such as they actually were. My father was consulted by the purchaser's solicitors to make a valuation of the goods, to assist in recovering some of the money paid, and in resisting payment of the balance. Now this gentleman had presided at meetings for the assistance of widows and orphans who were in distressed circumstances through the war, and it was pointed out to him that if the case were carried into court the searching cross-examination by counsel, would bring into publicity the fact of his helping in his public capacity, while in his private capacity he was obtaining the poor widow's goods at less than market value. Of course there was really no widow in the case; the goods were imported from Paris to feed the appetite of the "collector." This is one of many instances in which the buyer is almost as much to blame as the seller. So many rich people have a keen desire to get the better of the dealer in transactions where articles de vertu are concerned, and, if one may offer a well-meant suggestion, it would be to curb that natural bent, and be prepared to pay a fair price to a man of good reputation for a really good article.