A trader is careful of his guineas.

Its history is this: In the early part of the eighteenth century it had come accidentally into the possession of a London bookseller, who successively offered it to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and to Lord Sunderland; then the two principal collectors, for one hundred guineas; but both were staggered at the price and higgled about the purchase.

Loud notes of preparation foretold that it would sell for a considerable sum; five hundred and even one thousand guineas were guessed, as it was known that Lord Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Marquis of Blandford were all bent on its possession, but nobody anticipated the extravagant sum it was to realize.

This book was resold at the Marquis of Blandford's sale, in 1819, for eight hundred seventy-five guineas, and passed to Lord Spencer, in whose extraordinary library it now reposes.

She bade Harry Esmond pay her a visit whenever he passed through London, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse with twenty guineas for him to the tavern where he and his lord were staying, and with this welcome gift sent also a little doll for Beatrix, who, however, was growing beyond the age of dolls by this time, and was almost as tall as Lady Isabella.

I wish I had put by the money for thee, my poor portionless child; three hundred and eighty guineas of ready money to Messieurs Hatchett!"

It is not that the self-made man cannot or will not pay two guineas for a ball-ticket.

It is merely that, in his commercial way, he thinks that he will not have his money's worth, and therefore prefers keeping his two guineas to spend on something more tangiblesay food.

Shall I send my check for five guineas to you?"

"I gave Lady Fontain five guineas to let me in, and now I want a couple of chairs and a quiet corner, if the money includes such.

Fancy rabbits fetch a very high price; so much as five and ten guineas, and even more, is sometimes given for a first-rate doe.

Here, too, he executed his first literary work,a translation of Lobo's "Voyage to Abyssinia," which was published in 1735, and for which he received the munificent sum of five guineas!

After it had been rejected by several publishers, it was bought by Dodsley for ten guineas.

In 1749, he published his "Vanity of Human Wishes," for which he received the sum of fifteen guineas,a miserable recompense for a poem which Byron pronounces "sublime," and which is as true as it is magnificent in thought, and terse in language.

He received one hundred guineas for the copyright.

3 Call the Betsies, Kates, and Jennies, All the names that banish care; Lavish of your grandsire's guineas, Show the spirit of an heir. 4 All that prey on vice and folly Joy to see their quarry fly: There the gamester, light and jolly; There the lender, grave and sly.

Among the splendid collection of paintings is a candle-light scene (woman and child) by Rubens, which cost 1,500 guineas.

'If fifteen guineas,' said he, interrupting the answer he had demanded, 'will be of any service to you, there they are,'

I am with ten guineas exactly, and in perfect health.

His long and dreary journey having exhausted his money, and worn out his clothes, he drew on Sir Joseph Banks for twenty guineas, which that munificent patron of science and enterprise did not hesitate to pay.

In this forlorn condition, he bethought himself once more of the benevolence of Sir Joseph Banks, and had the good luck to raise five guineas, by a draft on his old benefactor, with which he reached London.

For in this way somewhat he expressed his satisfaction, half to persuade himself that the twenty guineas were well spent (since his wife thought otherwise), and half to explain this uncanny reality of life that lay in the fine old cedar framed above his study table.

"Perhaps," she reflected in her genuinely charitable heart, "he had other uses for the twenty guineas, an invalid sister or an old mother to support!"

Talk of sneezing, during the 'flu epidemic Madame Fallalerie has been giving a course of lessons, "How to sneeze prettily" (twenty guineas the course), and her reception-rooms in Bond Street have been simply packed.

But that guinea a week was not to go on for five-and-twenty weeks, but simply for fifteen, and then the net outgoings will be well over three guineas, reducing the "law" accorded our young couple to two-and-twenty weeks.