Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 167, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1910 — Price of Eloquence. [ARTICLE]

Price of Eloquence.

The auctioneer held up a battered fiddle. "What am I offered for this antique violin?” he pathetically inquired. "Look itover. See the blurred finger marks of remorseless time. Note the stains of the hurrying years. To the merry notes of this fine old instrument the brocaded dames of fair France may have danced the minuet in glittering Versailles. Perhaps the vestal virgins marched to its stirring rhythms in the feats of Lupercalia. Ha, it bears an imbrasion—perhaps a touch of fire. Why, this may have been the fiddle on which Nero played when Rome burned.”

“Thirty cents,” said a rednosed man in the front row.”

“Its yours! cried the auctioneer cheerfully. What next?”—Cleveland Plain Dealer.