Auctioneers were here busily engaged in
the disposal of their merchandise, which comprised every variety of
produce and manufacture, home and foreign, from a yard of
linsey-woolsey, "hum spun" as they termed it, to a bale of Manchester
long cloth, or their own Sea-Island cotton. The auctioneer in America is
a curious specimen of the biped creation. He is usually a swaggering,
consequential sort of fellow, and drives away at his calling with
wondrous impudence and pertinacity, dispensing, all the while he is
selling, the most fulsome flattery or the grossest abuse on those who
stand around. One of these loquacious animals was holding forth to a
crowd, just below the _Courier and Inquirer_ newspaper office, where
the street widens, as a preliminary introduction to the sale of a
quantity of linen goods that had been damaged at a recent fire in the
neighbourhood. I could not help admiring the man's tact. Fixing his eyes
on an individual in a white dress, with an enormous Leghorn hat on his
head, who was apparently eagerly listening, while smoking a cigar, to
the harangue, he suddenly exclaimed, "There now is Senator Huff, from
the State of Missouri, he heerd of this vendue a thousand mile up river,
and wall knows I'm about to offer somethin woth having; look at him, he
could buy up the fust five hunderd folks hed cum across anywhar in this
city, and what's more, he's a true patriot, made o' the right kinder
stuff, I guess.
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