How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano

How changed the house is, though! The front is patched over with
bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring
capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs
window--a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps--the
hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who thrust
printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid. Old women and amateurs
have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, poking
into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe
drawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the
looking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new menage
(Snob will brag for years that he has purchased this or that at Dives's
sale), and Mr. Hammerdown is sitting on the great mahogany
dining-tables, in the dining-room below, waving the ivory hammer, and
employing all the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason,
despair; shouting to his people; satirizing Mr. Davids for his
sluggishness; inspiriting Mr. Moss into action; imploring, commanding,
bellowing, until down comes the hammer like fate, and we pass to the
next lot. O Dives, who would ever have thought, as we sat round the
broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen such
a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?

It was rather late in the sale. The excellent drawing-room furniture
by the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected, regardless of
cost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser; the rich and
complete set of family plate had been sold on the previous days.
Certain of the best wines (which all had a great character among
amateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his master, who
knew them very well, by the butler of our friend John Osborne, Esquire,
of Russell Square. A small portion of the most useful articles of the
plate had been bought by some young stockbrokers from the City. And
now the public being invited to the purchase of minor objects, it
happened that the orator on the table was expatiating on the merits of
a picture, which he sought to recommend to his audience: it was by no
means so select or numerous a company as had attended the previous days
of the auction.