People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1893 — THE FUNNY AUCTIONEER. [ARTICLE]

THE FUNNY AUCTIONEER.

On One Occasion He Was Brought to See the Serious Side of a Case. "I was called on once to sell by auc tion a lot of household furniture belonging to a man and his wife who had been married four or five years," said an auctioneer in a reminiscent mood. "All I knew about it was that a death somewhere necessitated their removal from my town, and, as they had no money, they were compelled to sell their effects to get enough to move on Well, I was having a picnic in my young and foolish way, gaying and bantering and making brilliant and witty side remarks on the articles as they came under the hammer. After I had disposed of a lot of stuff a cradle was put up. There were several young men of my acquaintance in the crowd, and I smiled at them as I turned the cradle ’round and began to rock it, humming a lullaby as I did so. 'Empty is the cradle, baby's gone,' I said, and was going on to say something else to get a laugh, when I happened to look down into the face of a woman close to the platform I was standing on. She was dressed in faded black, evidently given her by some woman larger than she was, and there was a look in her eyes that made me stop. “She didn’t speak, but as I stopped she looked up at me with the tears starting, and lifting her hands in a mute appeal of remonstrance no word could describe, she gave a great sob of agony and turned away. “ ‘I—I didn’t know,’ was all I could stammer in apology. And I didn’t know that it was her baby’s cradle I was selling, and because the cradle was empty her heart was broken and she could no longer live in the house that the baby had left. “No, I didn’t know, nor did the crowd, but they all did pretty soon, and I told them a story that had no fun in it for any heart there, but it took just the same and I got $150 for that cradle before I was done with it, and then gave it back to the poor young mother."