a
regulation pack of fifty-two in order to do justice to his own hand and
skill, and in order to play off one card of his audience against another.

The auction has its own particular fascinations, and its own _habitues_
and devotees in every city. The chronic attendants should be the most
careful and conservative of buyers. But the artful auctioneer soon learns
to know them, to recognize them among his _clientele_, and to humour their
whims, moods, and fancies. Sooner or later he will wheedle them into a bid
against their better judgment, and then make good capital of the fact that
such and such a connoisseur had bought so great a bargain.

The question might be asked, impersonally and perhaps impertinently, What
was the auctioneer's influence at the Marquand sale? Was his the power?
Was it due to the catalogue? or was it in the air; and the zeal of an
eager audience?

The retail trade in rugs throughout this country is largely in the hands
of Armenians, both fixed and peripatetic; but of recent years much of
their business has been annexed by the department stores.

These various Armenian dealers are universally known for their shrewdness
and cleverness as well as for other ingenuousness and natural courtesy.
Except the heads of the carpet departments in some few large concerns,
they know much more about their wares than other salesmen, and their
personal, live knowledge gives a fillip of enthusiasm to the purchaser.
They would control the retail trade in rugs, were it not that the
department store has brought against them its powerful weapon of _per
cent_. The store asserts that it wants only its modest _per cent_ on the
cost of any article, no matter what its sentimental value may be. This may
not be truth in its stark nakedness, but it has availed to draw to them a
great deal of the trade in Oriental textiles.

The wholesale dealers are the most important factor in the question of
distribution, for almost all the rugs sold in the United States must first
pass through the hands of one or another of a dozen New York princes of
the market. Large or small retailers may import some pieces directly from
London, Paris, or Constantinople, but even the most important retailers
buy heavily from the great Armenian wholesalers in New York City.

It is difficult to estimate and impossible to state absolutely the number
or even the value of the Oriental rugs annually imported into the United
States. The reason is that in th