My education progressed another step forward on the occasion of my first visit to an auction room where presumably desirable pieces of Italian workmanship were displayed as a preliminary to their being disposed of by public outcry. I was accompanied by a friend--the wormholeist already mentioned--and when he lapsed into rhapsodies over a pair of gilt mirrors, or rather mirrors which once upon a time, say about the time of the Fall of the Roman Empire, had been gilded, I was astonished. “Surely,” I said, “nobody would want those things. See where the glass is flawed--the quicksilver must be pretty nearly all gone from the backs of them. And the molding is falling off in chunks and what molding is left is so dingy and stained that it doesn't look like anything at all. If you're asking me, I'd call those mirrors a couple of total losses.” “Exactly!” he said. “That is precisely what makes them so desirable. You can't counterfeit such age as these things show, my boy.” “I shouldn't care to try,” I said. “Where I came from, when a mirror got in such shape that you couldn't see yourself in it it was just the same to us as a chorus girl that had both legs cut off in a railroad accident--it was regarded as having lost most of its practical use in life. Still, it is not for me, a raw green novice, a sub-novice as you might say, to set myself up against an expert like you. Anyhow, as the fellow said, live and learn. Let us move along to the next display of moldy remains.” We did so. We came to a refectory table. Ordinarily a refectory table mainly differs in outline from the ordinary dining table by being constructed on the model of a dachshund. But this table, I should guess offhand, had seen about four centuries of good hard steady refecting at the hands of succeeding generations of careless but earnest feeders. Its top was chipped and marred by a million scars, more or less. Its legs were scored and worn down. Its seams gaped. From sheer weakness it canted far down to one side. The pressure of a hand upon it set the poor, slanted, crippled wreck to shaking as though along with all its other infirmities it had a touch of buck ague. “What about this incurable invalid?” I asked. “Unless the fellow who buys it sends it up in a padded ambulance it'll be hard to get it home all in one piece. I suppose that makes it all the more valuable, eh?” “Absolutely!” he said. “It's a perfectly marvelous thing! I figure it should bring at least six hundred dollars.” “And cheap enough,” I said. “Why, it must have at least six hundred dollars' worth of things the matter with it. A good cabinet-maker could put in a nice busy month just patching--” “You don't understand,” he said. “You surely wouldn't touch it?” “I shouldn't dare to,” I said. “I was speaking of a regular cabinet-maker. No green hand should touch it--he'd have it all in chunks in no time.”