WHAT AM I BID?

AN AUCTION SALE OF FUNERAL AND WEDDING TRAPPINGS

"What am I offered?"

"Oh, don't sell that!" said one or two bidders.

The auctioneer held up a large walnut case. It contained a funeral wreath of preserved flowers.

"Well, I've sold coffins at auction in my time, so I guess I can stand this," replied the auctioneer. "What am I offered?"

He disposed of it, with three other funeral mementos, very cheap, for the bidding was dispirited. It was at the sale yesterday, in a Montgomery Street auction-room, of the personal effects, jewelry, silverware, and household bric-a-brac of a once very wealthy San Francisco family. The head of the family was a pioneer, a citizen of wealth and high social and commercial standing. It was he who, in early days, projected South Park. There was no family in the city whose society was more sought after, or which entertained better, than that of James Randolph.

"What am I offered for this lot?"

He referred to the lot catalogued as "No. 107," and described as "Wedding-dress, shoes, etc."

"Don't sell _that_!" The very old-clo' man remonstrated this time.

It seemed worse than the sale of the funeral wreath. The dress was heavy white satin--had been, that is; it was yellowed with time.

The tiny shoes had evidently been worn but once.

"What am I offered? Make a bid, gentlemen. I offer the lot. What am I offered?"

"One dollar."

"One dollar I am offered for the lot--wedding-dress, shoes, etc.

One dollar for the lot. Come gentlemen, bid up."

Not an old-clo' man in the room bid, and the outsider who bid the dollar had the happiness to see it knocked down to him.

"What am I bid for this photograph alb.u.m? Bid up, gentlemen. Here's a chance to get a fine collection of photographs of distinguished citizens, their wives, and daughters."

A gentleman standing on the edge of the crowd quietly bid in the alb.u.m. When it was handed to him, he opened it, took out his own and the photographs of several ladies, dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago, and tossed the alb.u.m, with the other photographs, in the stove, remarking: "Well, _they_ won't go to the junk-shop."

"What am I offered, gentlemen, for this? There is just seventeen dollars' worth of gold in it. Bid up."

The auctioneer held up an engraved gold medal. It was a Crimean war medal which its owner was once proud to wear. There was a time in his life when no money could have purchased it. He had risked his life for the honour of wearing it; and after his death it was offered for old gold.

"Twenty dollars."

"Twenty dollars; twenty, twenty, twenty! Mind your bid, gentlemen.

Seventeen dollars for the gold, and three for the honour. Twenty, tw-en-ty, and going, going, gone! Seventeen dollars for the gold, and three for the honour."

In this way an ebony writing-desk, with the dead citizen's private letters, was sold to a hand-me-down shop-keeper. A tin box with private papers went to a junk-dealer; and different lots of cla.s.sical music, some worn, some marked with the givers' names, some with verses written on the pages, were sold to second-hand dealers. "What am I bid?" The sale went rapidly on. Sometimes an old family friend would bid in an article as a souvenir. But the junk-dealers, second-hand men, and hand-me-down shop-keepers took in most of the goods.

The above articles were the contents of a chest, and were the personal effects of Mrs. Richard Clough, the late daughter of the late James Randolph, of San Francisco. She had evidently carefully packed them away at some time before her death; and the chest had been mislaid or overlooked, until it made its way, intact, and twelve years after, into the hands of the public.

And that was the last that Dudley Thorpe heard of Nina Randolph in this world.