"At first I could hardly believe what the drift of it was. But I hope to
die if she wasn't sincere in her ideas about me as an auctioneer. I didn't
get it, as I say, and that's where I made my big mistake. I let her come
to the auctions and told her not to bid. But when I'd start my patter on
some useless piece of 5-and l0-cent store bric-a-brac and give it an
identity and hint at Count Rudolph's collection and so on, she was off
like a two-year-old down a morning track.

"I didn't know how to fix it or how to head her out of it. For a month I
didn't have the heart to disillusion her. I let her buy. Damn it, I never
saw such an absolute boob as she was. She'd pick out the most worthless
junk I was knocking down and go mad over it and buy it with my good money.
It got so that I realized I was slipping. I'd get a promise from her that
she wouldn't come into the auction, but I never could be sure. And if I
felt like cutting loose on some piece of junk and knocking it down with a
lot of flourishes I knew sure as fate that the missus would be there and
that she would be the fish that caught fire first and most and that I'd be
selling the thing to myself.

"Well, after the first two months of my married life I realized that I'd
have to talk turkey to the missus. She was costing me my last nickel at
these auctions and the better auctioneer I was the more money I lost, on
account of her being so susceptible to my line of stuff. It sounds funny,
but it's a fact. So I told her. I made a clean breast. I told her what a
liar I was and how all the stuff I pulled from the auction stand was the
bunk and how she was a boob for falling for it. And so on and so on. Say,
I sold myself to her as the world's greatest, all around, low down,
hideous liar that ever walked in shoe leather. And that's how it started.
This divorce today is kind of an anti-climax. We ain't had much to do with