OCR Text |
Show PATTI'S FAREWELL TOUR. The announcement of Patti's final farewell tour, reminds one of a guileless American's dis-sectations dis-sectations on Persian and Turkish rugs. It runs something like this: "My dear Madam, you must understand that these rugs, like old wine, not only improve but take on an ordor of sanctity' with age. This rug, for instance, was woven by a beautiful maiden of Cashmere, in the years 1643-44, 1643-44, etc., to 1G5G. Then it was sold to a camel driver down among the Bedouins for $7.00 and was used as a horse blanket for twenty-three years. It was then purchased by a sheik for $34 who made a saddle blanket of it and rode it during dur-ing the remainder of his life, seventeen years. Its improved appearance arrested the eyes of a wealthy pilgrim on the way to Mecca, who purchased pur-chased it for $70. He was a wealthy Turk and had just married. He raised several families of children chil-dren on this same rug, and at the end of a long life, so much had the rug improved that it attracted attract-ed the attention of a wealthy Persian who attended attend-ed the auction of the Turk's chattels and amid great excitement he bought it for $160. This was auout A. D. 1706. The Persian used it in his ser-alio ser-alio twenty years and then presented it to a German Ger-man who had saved his life. The German, kept it in his family for forty years and when he died his widow presented it to the monks of her village, her stipulation being that they should perform per-form masses to the amount of $276 for the peace of her deceased husband's soul. Those monks, being honest men, sent the rug to Berlin to grace the chapel of the parent cathedral in that city. When Napoleon took the city and robbed it of its works of art, this rug was held as one of the features fea-tures of rare booty obtained and he sent it for a door mat for Notre Dame. After Waterloo it was sold to an English nobleman for $517 and at his death in 1844 it was sold to a relic gatherer for $27. When he died twenty years later it was bid in by a vendor of second-hand wares and lay In his ware house twenty years. Then my father who was a judge of art bought it one day for 2, sent'it to a steam cleaner, fixed up a pedigree for fl it and sold it to a soft American who happened H to be making his first visit to England for 60, I 17 shillings; but he told me when coming to Am- I erica to hunt up that rare rug. I followed his H advice and last year ran it down and bought it of the widow of that American for $24. There never was a rug like it offered in America for $2,000, but Madam, I have money to raise and will for H you make a sacrifice and will sell it for $1,500. It H is just pitiable but the sacrifice is necessary. In H three hundred years more, Madam, that rug will H bring you easily $4,500." H |