So in view of these youthful influences it should be patent to all that, having other things to think of—such, for example, as making a living—I did not realize that in New York at least those wishful of following the modes did not go to a good live shop making a specialty of easy payments when they had a house-furnishing proposition on their hands. That might be all very well for the pedestrian classes and for those living in the remote districts who kept a mail-order catalogue on the center table and wrote on from time to time with the money order enclosed. 

 I soon was made to understand that the really correct thing was first of all to call in a professional decorator, if one could afford it. A professional decorator is a person of either sex who can think up more ways and quicker ways of spending other people's money than the director of a shipping board can. But whether you retained the services of a regular decorator or elected to struggle along on your own, you went for your purchases to specialty shops or to antique shops, or—best of all—to the smart auction shops on or hard by Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue. 

 Than the auction rooms in the Fifth Avenue district I know of no places better adapted for studying patina, wormholing and human nature in a variety of interesting phases. To such an establishment, on the days when a sale is announced—which means two or three times a week for a good part of the year—repair wealthy patrons, patrons who were wealthy before the mania for bidding in things came upon them, as it does come upon so many, and patrons who are trying to look as though they were wealthy. The third group are in the majority. 

 Amateur collectors come, on the lookout for lace fans or Japanese bronzes or Chinese ceramics or furniture or pictures or hangings or rugs or tapestries, or whatever it is that constitutes their favorite hobby. There are sure to be prominent actor folk and author folk in this category. Dealers are on hand, each as wise looking as a barnful of hoot-owls and talking the jargon of the craft. 

 Agents from rival auction houses are sometimes seen, ready, should the opportunity present itself, to snap up a bargain with intent to reauction it at their own houses at a profit. With the resident proprietor one of this gentry is about as popular as a bat in a boarding school, but since there is no law to bar him out and since it is in the line of business for him to be present, why present he generally is. 

 Rich women drive up in their town cars and shabby purveyors 

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