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Show SELECTED. . A DEAD-LETTEH ACCTIOS. WTiile walking aloDg Ninth street the other nig-ht, I observed a red transparency, tran-sparency, with white letters upon it. to the effect that an auction of dead letters was going on. ' This seemed to be such a curious business that I entered the low, dingy room, half commission store and half auction mart, such as these gentlemen of the mallet most affect. af-fect. 1 found under the dim, stinking gas that prevades the national capital, a motley crowd of clerks, boarding-house boarding-house keepers, strangers. Irishmen, and a few negroes. On a counter, with his head almost touching the ceiling, was a blear-eyed, bald-headed man, who seemed to be in a perpetual state of influenza, selling the articles enumerated by the catalogue, in a slow, sleepy way, tha seemed greatly to aggravate his audience. I stood looking on for nearly half an hour, and was struck with the odd sort of things people send through the mails. Xhey were mostly tokens o: affection, af-fection, in some shape or other, and ran from a pair of suspenders to a pair of breeches. The amount of baby stuff was really astonishing. As the rude auctioneer held up each article in the dim light, and coarsely cried it off, I could not help but think of the fineers U. 1 L-J .1 .1 l i.uau uau worseu, anu tne neart tnat had throbbed over the token of affection, affec-tion, and remembered that it had failed of its destination, and now was being sold forfilthy lucre to this motley crowd. Two-thirds of thete eridences of remembering re-membering love came . from women. The fact is, during my stay, I did not see one that could be positively ascribed as-cribed to a man. To woman's busy fingers, and to a woman's heart, could the work be attributed, and also to a woman's ignorance or carelessness, probably, in addressing, is due the fact that the work miscarried. How many were dead to whose remembrance re-membrance these little things appealed! How many were scattered in the world's wide ways, never to be heard of again by those who reached out from their hearts for loving recognition 1 Each momento told its story an old, old story perhaps, but yet a touching one. I saw a child's shoe a little half-worn bit of tarnished morocco sent probably prob-ably from the coffin othe little three-year three-year old to some grandmother, to tell ip mute eloquence that the busy little feet were quiet now forever. What a small, worthless thing, and yet large enough to parry the grief of broken hearts and a tearful memory that can never die. And it had miscarried, ana was now tosseu asiae Dy tne roUli auctioneer, appealing to a rougher crowd. The crowd was in an uproarious humor, hu-mor, decidedly hilarious over the event, and chaffed the- auciioneer, who, in turn, replied in the liveliest manner for one in such a chrouio state of cold. There was an Irishman who bid a quarter of a dollar for evorythiug. He never bid any more, but the moment an article made its appearance he cried, "I'll give ye a quarther for it now !" And. like all repetitions, this came to be funny after a time. At last the auctioneer produced about two yards of a dismal-colored stuff, when the Irishman, as usual, bid a quarter. Before Be-fore any one else could add a bid, the auctioneer knocked it down and tossed it over to our Hibernian friend, saying: say-ing: "There, Paddy, take that for your quarter, and ' quit bidding." The Irishman caught the stuff, looked at it a second, and then exclaimed ; "Be jabers, an' I tbougbt it was silk." ."I told you it was Alabama wool, you bog-trotter. " "And did your mother ever believe anything you told?" "Nj, but my father did." "Oh, be jabers, but he wqs the father of lies, you know," . Tnis last remark touching the paternity pater-nity of the unhappy auctioneer, brought down the house in roars of laughter, and Paddy went on bidding his quarter for everything that came up, with great felat. At last tho auctioneer unrolled half a dozen of silver spoons. "Now, gentlemen," ho said, "I don't know whether these are silver or not. "Pass them down and 'ct uJook for ourselves,'' cried several in the crowd. "l'on't you do it," cried an old fellow, fel-low, who up to that time seemed to hava been half asleep. "Don't you do it; Ben Butler may be about." This brought out another laugh, which was increased when the auctioneer auction-eer turned and said, gravely, "No, gentlemen, I am responsible for this property." This reference to the spoons is a favorite joke of the crowd, I tup-pose, tup-pose, all over the United States, and it is more especially so in Washington. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I offer you a valuable lot, Nos, CI and 6i liere is the pocket book of a lobby agent sout to a member of Congress; here is a ring returned to her lover by a blighted maiden, who married a maii contractor aud died of a broken heart; here is a silk bandanna you can wipe your eyes with while wecpine over tbe Blighted maiden; to this ad4 tbe niaiic wash to remove stains " "Will it take the dirt out of Porter?" said odo. . "Or the spots out of But'er's character?" char-acter?" a--kea another. "V'cs, gentlemen, and the bad tate out of your dirty mouths after this blackguarding, llowpu'h ?" "I bid n quarther." said ihe irrepressible irre-pressible Fat. "I'd like to knock yon down ln-tead of tbe lot that I will knock d iwn to the next bidder.'' And so tho valuable )"i went for the sum of thirty cents cn-li. "Jim, get me a gtass of .i'c: this is dry lu:nc-," said the clo-tucnt man of the mallet to an assistau. The ale was procured, and as it wmi down his throat', odc of the crowd cried, "Going, going, going," and as the tan drop disappeared, shouted, "Gone." The auciioneer set down the g'ass, and after the laugh sul sided, asked gravely, ''Vho said gone?'' No one re-ponded, and he continued, contin-ued, "If the gentleman who cried 'gone' will call at the post r.fiee tomorrow, to-morrow, with the necessary affidavits, he will hear " "All about the Chorpenning case." interrupted a shrill voice. I left while the crowd were yet laughing, and the auctioneer looking about him as- if in search of a brick or a boot jack to throw at the offender. Don Piatt, in the Cincinnati Commercial. |