His Last Cent by Francis Hopkinson Smith — Read

Jack Waldo stood in his studio gazing up at the ceiling, or, to be more exact, at a Venetian church-lamp -- which he had just hung and to which he had just attached a red silk tassel bought that morning of a bric-a-brac dealer whose shop was in the next street. There was a bare spot in that corner of his sumptuously appointed room which offended Waldo's sensitive taste -- a spot needing a touch of yellow brass and a note of red -- and the silk tassel completed the color-scheme. The result was a combination which delighted his soul; Jack had a passion for having his soul delighted and an insatiable thirst for the things that did the delighting, and could no more resist the temptation to possess them when exposed for sale than a confirmed drunkard could resist a favorite beverage held under his nose.

That all of these precious objects of bigotry and virtue were beyond his means, and that most of them then enlivening his two perfectly appointed rooms were still unpaid for, never worried Jack.