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Some especially interesting early paintings are being brought to me from Soochow, Nankin, and other interior points and I cannot resist them. So, I have asked you to kindly cable me on the 16th, inst. nine thousand dollars, through the Hongkong, Shanghai Bank of Shanghai.

At present they prefer to have remittances in American dollars rather than English sterling - why, one can never understand in this land of endless exchange mysteries.

Rates of exchange differ daily, and the returns on American and English money in Mexican silver or Chinese paper currency is considerably less than last year, and this in addition to the rapidly advancing prices for all first class works of art, runs up my outlay. 

I comfort myself with the assurance that prices here for fine things will never go lower, and how long the supply now pouring