"Borax makes but little demonstration of his wealth in the dingy hole that serves him for a shop, where a Double-Bass, a couple of Violoncellos, a Tenor or two hanging on the walls, and half-a-dozen Fiddles lying among a random collection of bows, bridges, coils of catgut, packets of purified resin, and tangled horsehair in skeins, serve for the insignia of his profession. But Borax never does business in his shop, which is a dusty desert from one week's end to another. His warehouse is a private sanctum on the first floor, where you will find him in his easy chair reading the morning paper, if he does not happen to be engaged with a client. Go to him for a Fiddle, or carry him a Fiddle for his opinion, and you will hardly fail to acknowledge that you stand in the presence of a first-rate judge. The truth is, that Fiddles of all nations, disguised and sophisticated as they may be to deceive common observers, are naked and self-confessed in his hands. Dust, dirt, varnish, and bees'-wax are thrown away upon him; he knows the work of every man, of note or of no note, whether English, French, Dutch, German, Spaniard, or Italian, who ever sent a Fiddle into the market, for the last two hundred years; and he will tell you who is the fabricator of your treasure, and the rank he holds in the Fiddle-making world, with the utmost readiness and urbanity--on payment of his fee of one guinea. "Borax is the pink of politeness, though a bit of a martinet after an ancient and punctilious model. If you go to select a Fiddle from his stock, you may escape a lecture of a quarter of an hour by _calling_ it a Fiddle, and not a Violin, which is a word he detests, and is apt to excite his wrath. He is never in a hurry to sell, and will by no means allow you to conclude a bargain until he has put you in complete possession of the virtues, and failings, if it have any, of the instrument for which you are to pay a round sum. As his Fiddles lie packed in sarcophagi, like mummies in an Egyptian catacomb, your choice is not perplexed by any _embarras de richesses_; you see but one masterpiece at a time, and Borax will take care that you _do_ see that, and know all about it, before he shows you another. First unlocking the case, he draws the instrument tenderly from its bed, grasps it in the true critical style with the fingers and thumbs of both hands a little above the bridge, turning the scroll towards you. Now and then he twangs, with the thumb of his left hand, the third or fourth string, by way of emphasis to the observations which he feels bound to make--instinctively avoiding, however, that part of the strings subject to the action of the bow. Giving you the name of the maker, he proceeds to enlighten you on the peculiar characteristics of his work; then he will dilate upon the remarkable features of the specimen he holds in his hand--its build, its model, the closeness and regularity of the grain of the wood of which the belly was fashioned: