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 hero. "I simply felt it was my duty to prevent you from losing the profit that was bound to come your way If you held on a few days longer."

Our newspapers have told us (we should like to know who told the newspapers) that high prices are popular prices. It is fitting and proper that people who own the wealth of the world should pay a great deal for everything they buy. Shoppers with their purses full of money are affronted by any hint of cheapness or economy. This may be true, though it reminds me a little of a smiling Neapolitan who once assured me that his donkey liked to be beaten. One cannot, without entering into the mind of a donkey or of a rich American, deny the tastes imputed to them; but one may cherish doubts. It is true that "record prices" have been paid for every luxury, that the sales of furriers and jewellers have been unprecedented in the annals of our commerce, that the 248