Ellen Axson Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

I have got back from New York, tired, but very triumphant having found at an auction room a stunning mantle mirror six feet wide (just the width of the chimney breast.) and eight feet high in fine condition with good plate glass for $40.00 dollars! There will be $8.00 more for hauling and crating so that it will cost delivered I suppose about $50.00. Isn't that fine? I feel as if the room were made now. The mantle is to be unpacked early tomorrow morning. Mr. Fay told me he could get such a mirror for me for a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars. I suppose that represents the difference between the price one pays when one bids for a thing and when it is thrown on the market.

I also found at Fays a gem of a table for the guest room for $20.00, genuine antique, a perfect beauty. I found that there were only two chairs at Prospect for the reception room, so I decided we were obliged to have more than the five, or we couldn't seat an ordinary dinner party in the room. So I got two more of the same reduced lot at $25.00 each instead of the screen, another big square arm chair and an exquisite small one with carved back all wood. I have been pricing that style of furniture everywhere and I am more impressed than ever with the bargain we got. There is not the smallest, plainest chair of that sort to be had anywhere else for less than $35.00. — (Flint has taken back the washstand.–) – And by the way the five chairs will be upholstered there for $11.50; they had not packed them. Do excuse this incoherent scrawl; it will sound natural at least! I am “sure” writing just as I talk after a day in New York. I must stop though for I find several letters to be answered tonight and I walked a great deal today.

With love unbounded