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Does The Young Man Know Everything Worth Knowing?
by
“Yeth; you’ll hear it a bit oftener during the next eighteen month or tho. You take care you don’t get tired of hearing it, thath all,” he laughed. “Yeth,” he continued, thoughtfully, “Reynoldth ith played out. Nothing much to be made of Gainthborough, either. Dealing in that lot now, why, it’th like keeping a potht offith. Hoppner’th the coming man.”
“You’ve been buying Hoppners up cheap,” I suggested.
“Between uth,” he answered, “yeth, I think we’ve got them all. Maybe a few more. I don’t think we’ve mithed any.”
“You will sell them for more than you gave for them,” I hinted.
“You’re thmart,” he answered, regarding me admiringly, “you thee through everything you do.”
“How do you work it?” I asked him. There is a time in the day when he is confidential. “Here is this man, Hoppner. I take it that you have bought him up at an average of a hundred pounds a picture, and that at that price most owners were fairly glad to sell. Few folks outside the art schools have ever heard of him. I bet that at the present moment there isn’t one art critic who could spell his name without reference to a dictionary. In eighteen months you will be selling him for anything from one thousand to ten thousand pounds. How is it done?”
“How ith everything done that’th done well?” he answered. “By earnetht effort.” He hitched his chair nearer to me, “I get a chap– one of your thort of chapth–he writ’th an article about Hoppner. I get another to anthwer him. Before I’ve done there’ll be a hundred articleth about Hoppner–hith life, hith early thruggie, anecdo’th about hith wife. Then a Hoppner will be thold at public auchtion for a thouthand guineath.”
“But how can you be certain it will fetch a thousand guineas?” I interrupted.
“I happen to know the man whoth going to buy it.” He winked, and I understood.
“A fortnight later there will be a thale of half-a-dothen, and the prithe will be gone up by that time.”
“And after that?” I said.
“After that,” he replied, rising, “the American millionaire! He’ll jutht be waiting on the door-thtep for the thale-room to open.”
“If by any chance I come across a Hoppner?” I said, laughing, as I turned to go.
“Don’t you hold on to it too long, that’th all,” was his advice.