Sotheby's auction rooms, in London, are in a large house, full of dark carpeted passages, like tunnels under the ground. One of these passages leads to the big gallery which, one day last week, was inhabited by a curious and excited crowd. The walls of the gallery were covered with brown burlap and old paintings. In front was an oak pulpit and the auctioneer.
The people who had come to bid were sitting around a long U-shaped table below the auctioneer's pulpit; behind them was a crowd of 300 spectators. The most important prospective...
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