An auction of any importance is a public holiday. Clergy, doctors, lawyers, and police officers gather to the scene, not unlike those beasts of prey of whom we read that they readily devour the remains of a fallen member of their own pack. The natives also collect together--publicans and shopkeepers in search of bargains in china, glass, and house-linen; farmers bent on purchasing such outdoor property as wheelbarrows, scythes, or harness.
When Hyacinth, to use the local expression, ‘called an auction’ shortly after his father’s death, he was favoured with quite the usual crowd of would-be buyers. Almost everyone with either money or credit within a radius of twenty miles came into Carrowkeel for the occasion. The presiding auctioneer had done his duty beforehand by advertising old Mr. Conneally’s mouldy furniture as ‘magnificently upholstered’ suites, and his battered editions of the classics as ‘a valuable library of handsomely bound books.’ It is not likely that anyone was really deceived by these announcements, or expected to find in the little rectory anything sumptuous or splendid. The people assembled mainly because they were exceedingly curious to see the inside of a house whose doors had never been open to them during the lifetime of the owner. It was always possible, besides, that though the ‘magnificently upholstered suites’ existed only in the auctioneer’s imagination, treasures of silver spoons or candlesticks plated upon copper might be discovered among the effects of a man who lived as queer a life as Mr. Conneally. When men and women put themselves to a great deal of inconvenience to attend an auction, they do not like to return empty-handed. A day is more obviously wasted if one goes home with nothing to show than if one brings a table or a bedstead purchased at twice its proper value. Thus the bidding at Hyacinth’s auction was brisk, and the prices such as gave sincere satisfaction to the auctioneer. Everything was sold except ‘the valuable library.’ It was in vain that the auctioneer made personal appeals to Father Moran and the Rector of Clifden, as presumably the two most learned gentlemen present. Neither of them wanted the venerable classics. In fact, neither of them could have read a line of the crooked Greek type or construed a page of the Latin authors. Even the Irish books, in spite of the Gaelic revival, found no purchasers. When all was over, Hyacinth wheeled them away in barrowfuls, wondering greatly what he was to do with them.