Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/116

100 and to jaw you into a purchase, asking you in a most petulant way, what you offer for this, that, and the other? All night auctions are of this sort: the seller having purchased the goods for the express purpose of auctioning them off, often pushing the price exorbitantly beyond the real value; asseverating that the manufacturer never will be paid; and increasing his earnestness the more he lies, in order to keep up the delusion.

Sometimes, though the sale has not begun when you enter, they will immediately begin business, and perhaps one among them will pretend to make a purchase; not only so, he will even pay down the money, so that this is likely to induce you to make a bidding. An equally deep manœuvre is, the offer to take back, or exchange, the articles under sale, for others in a day, a week, or ten days. This is more pariicularly the case with watches: if you do so take them back, you pay through the nose for the exchange, and you find out too late you had better have taken Dr. Johnson's advice, and dealt "at a stately shop, at once, where it would not be worth their while to take you in for a pound or two, at the expence of their reputation."

On the other hand, it is not to be denied, that a great many bargains are met with at auctions