32 
House & Garden 
The main street of this little Pennsylvania town lay looking sleepily in the summer sun—a street of stone houses and brick 
sidewalks that Penn had helped to found on his wise homestead plan in the years when our country was so strangely new 
THE COUNTRY AUCTION SALE 
While it May Not Always Be a Gold Mine for the Collector it Is the 
Funniest Amusement the Countryside Furnishes 
GRACE NORTON ROSE 
L URED by the rumor of an auction sale, we 
j had journeyed down to this little Pennsyl¬ 
vania town of old stone houses and brick side¬ 
walks. Directed by the corduroyed hostler 
boy, we crossed the courtyard of the hotel and 
read this notice: 
“COME TO MY BIG COMBINATION 
SALE HELD AT THE BRICK 
HOTEL, NEWTON, 
PENNSYLVANIA.” 
Here followed a detailed description of live 
stock obviously written for a farming country, 
and then came the para¬ 
graph that interested us: 
“These goods are listed. 
Big lot of Household 
Goods — such as suits, 
bureau, washstands, 
chairs, of all kinds, 
three-burner gas stove, 
lamps, a lot of tools and 
an endless amount of 
other goods that always 
come in at the last min¬ 
ute. So bring on any¬ 
thing and everything, 
that you have to sell, ex¬ 
cept hogs (can't sell ’em) 
and we will get you a 
fair price for them. 
Terms cash. 
Ira H. Cornell.” 
The promises held out 
seemed somewhat at va¬ 
riance with the fulfill¬ 
ment. Chairs of one kind 
seemed to us to be nearer 
the truth as we looked at 
them huddled disconso¬ 
lately together; chairs of 
incredible shabbiness and 
mediocre character, but 
I must say the “endless 
amount of other goods” 
justified itself. There 
were no hogs. With bug¬ 
gies and farm racks, rac¬ 
ing gigs and family sur¬ 
reys, all in various stages of dilapidation gath¬ 
ering hourly to go cheerfully under the ham¬ 
mer, why this embargo against the economical 
porker ? 
A Motley Collection 
Country wagons were already unloading 
their collections of junk. There were horse¬ 
hair sofas with downtrodden look, several old 
glass lamps, a kitchen stove, two marble-topped 
tables, a number of pictures too frightful to 
be endured without laughter or tears, an old 
candlestick with the snuffer missing, a badly 
used Lowestoft cup, a cider jug of beautiful 
burnt orange glaze and several bits of cheap 
pine furniture. We threaded our way between 
the discouraged sofas and rusty bed-springs 
and silently selected our treasures, indicating 
to each other in nods the desirability of bid¬ 
ding on this or that; hoping that no one else 
would notice our interest in the little mahogany 
mirror with the cracked glass but the excellent 
frame, the one odd chair worth while, a beauti¬ 
ful but decrepit Empire sofa, a little brass 
shovel, a few good old books published in the 
latter part of the 18th Century, and a roomy 
chest of drawers in sad repair. 
A brand new and shiny Ford drove up with 
a flourish and three large 
wooden wash tubs were 
unloaded. A country 
washstand was pushed 
off unceremoniously and 
an endless number of 
white stone china bowls 
and pitchers. “Ma don’t 
need this stuff any more,” 
announced the youth as 
he scrambled among the 
potato sacks in the bot¬ 
tom of the machine, 
“We’ve had ’lectricity 
put in, an’ runnin’ 
water,” he held up a tiny 
gem of a gilt mirror in 
careless hands and thrust 
it out. “Might as well 
take this old thing.” 
My hands went out in¬ 
stinctively to take and 
put the charming “old 
thing” in a safe and se¬ 
cluded spot, but the auc¬ 
tioneer’s assistant swung 
it nonchalantly over to 
the seat of a broken chair 
with the caustic remark: 
“It’s got a piece coming 
out of the frame.” 
Ignoring this, the boy 
slammed out two old or¬ 
namented sheets of tin 
such as are used in 
country parlors under 
Horses were being trotted up and down. Farmers and countrymen crossed con¬ 
tinuously, urging balky calves along, carrying some, dragging some at cart ends, 
and coaxing others by the simple means of twisting their poor little tails 
