I revolved in my mind a great many plans for raising the sum required,
and one morning, as I was going to my place of business in the city, I
was seized with a happy idea. At the moment of seizure I was standing in
front of a large show-window, in which were a number of oil paintings,
all of them very fresh and bright. "How would it do," thought I to
myself, "to buy a picture at a moderate price and put it up at a
raffle? People who are not willing to give money outright will often
enter into a scheme of this kind. I will go in and make inquiries."
When I entered I found myself in a large showroom, the walls of which
were covered with paintings. A person advanced to meet me who, as it
soon became evident, was the proprietor of the place. He was a large
man, dressed in black, with an open shirt-front and an expansive
countenance. His eyes and hair were black, and his ears stood out from
his head in a manner which, according to a recent writer, indicates the
money-getting faculty; and he plainly belonged to that class of persons
who in the Middle Ages did not, as is the present custom, pay money for
having their teeth extracted, but often disbursed large sums for the
privilege of retaining them. When I asked him if I could procure a good
and effective picture at a moderate price, he threw out his chest and
waved his arms toward his walls.
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