The next thing is to sell it. Six hundred and fifty dollars seems a high price for a square piano, such as we used to buy for three hundred, and the "natural cost" of which does not much exceed two hundred dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars for a grand piano is also rather startling. But how much tax, does the reader suppose, is paid upon a fifteen-hundred-dollar grand? It is difficult to compute it; but it does not fall much below two hundred dollars. The five per cent manufacturer's tax, which is paid upon the price of the finished instrument, has also to be paid upon various parts, such as the wire; and upon the imported articles there is a high tariff. It is computed that the taxes upon very complicated articles, in which a great variety of materials are employed, such as carriages, pianos, organs, and fine furniture, amount to about one eighth of the price. The piano, too, is an expensive creature to keep, in these times of high rents, and its fare upon a railroad is higher than that of its owner. We saw, however, a magnificent piano, the other day, at the establishment of Messrs. Chickering, in Broadway, for which passage had been secured all the way to Oregon for thirty-five dollars,--only five dollars more than it would cost to transport it to Chicago. Happily for us, to whom fifteen hundred dollars--nay, six hundred and fifty dollars--is an enormous sum of money, a very good second-hand piano is always attainable for less than half the original price. For, reader, you must know that the ostentation of the rich is always putting costly pleasures within the reach of the refined not-rich. A piano in its time plays many parts, and figures in a variety of scenes. Like the more delicate and sympathetic kinds of human beings, it is naught unless it is valued; but, being valued, it is a treasure beyond price. Cold, glittering, and dumb, it stands among the tasteless splendors with which the wealthy ignorant cumber their dreary abodes,--a thing of ostentation merely,--as uninteresting as the women who surround it, gorgeously apparelled, but without conversation, conscious of defective parts of speech. "There is much music, excellent voice, in that little organ," but there is no one there who can "make it speak." They may "fret" the noble instrument; they "cannot play upon it."