ON BARGAINS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2443, 6 March 1909, Page 3

ON BARGAINS.

The joy of making a bargain is one of the most profound of human emotions, says somel ody.When you meet a creature, male or feamle, who professes not to f< el it you are justified in the strongest suspicion. It is as if you found a child who did not like sweets, or a schoolgirl with no taste for romance. These tilings no doubt exist. Many kinds of monstrosities exist in this fairyland we call the .iv<hfi(3uuil?g6 Litieir existence. We have to turn them as swiftly and thoroughly as possible into something human. There are melancholy sprites wandering about the world to preach the creed that a bargain is never a bargain; to assure you that you were really a fool to make that purchase which has been filling your soul with a pure and holy delight, to convince you that it is either something you don’t want or something not worth having. The basis of all this appears to be two simple, silly axioms. First, that no one in his senses ever sold anything cheap and secondly, that no one but a vulgarian would desire to buy anything which is not dear. Into these simple words is compressed a masterly misapprehension of life. The truthds of course, that the whole fabric trade rests uopn the endeavour to sell things cheap. It is mere blindness, “sand-blindness, higli-grav-el blindness” in the words of thatgreat philosopher, Launcelot Gobbo, to suppose that the buyer is the person pleased at a good bargain. The seller is no less delighted because of the elementary fact that people go where bargains are. He rejoices in profitable, acuteness winch enables him to offer bargains, no less than the buyer in her sagacity which has given her the power to detect bargains where she sees them and divine where they are likely to be found. The dear old fallacy that commerce is a business in which one party must lose, is hard to kill, and it accounts for half the sneers at b ;u ~ gain-hunters as dupes. Ihe other half, aimed at the assumed vulgantj ot a bargain, comes not so much iiom common stupidity as a queer meanness of mind. A bargain is vulgar because it is cheap which is as much ns to say that, nothing can be worth having unless it costs a lot, which means that the only good things in the world are the things which very few people can get. Whereas the. sane truth is that- the best things the <r ods give are those winch aie given to every healthy man a™ wont an.- The detestable fancy that everything is vulgar which can be owned by more than a select feu is really the brand of a nature lower than human. To despise anything because the mass of humanity possess it means' that you are ashamed of being a human creature, tbatyou are afraid of being yourself.. Winch ■is about tlie lowest depth one would desire of one’s enemies. There is, in fact, nothing in the world mote defensible than delight m the cheapness of a bargain. But of course, like oil vo rv good tilings it can be sadly •abused'. To tell again the miserable stale of the bargains! that nobody wauts would be to add one wore superfluous woe to human liie. Bui"gains for bargains sake are as demoralising and not much Jess ugly than art for art’s sake. Anything in the world can be made objectionablo by people with no intelligence or no will. But that must, not-be allowed to rob ns of our human privilege ok delight in sales.