aper of hooks and
eyes. The woman paid the money, and A. T. Stewart was launched, then and
there, on a career.

He was a handsome young fellow--intelligent, and never too familiar, but
just familiar enough. Women liked him; he was so respectful, almost
reverent, in his attitude toward them. It took a better man to be a
salesman then than now. Every article was marked in cipher, with two
prices. One figure represented what the thing cost and the other was the
selling-price. You secured the selling-price, if you could, and if you
couldn't, you took what you could get, right down to the cost figure.
The motto was, never let a customer go without selling him something.
The rule now is to sell people what they want, but never urge any one to
buy.

Both buyer and seller then enjoyed these fencing-bouts of the bazaar.
The time for simple dealing between man and man had not yet come. To
haggle, banter and blarney were parts of the game, and parts which the
buyer demanded as his right. He would trade only at places where he
thought he was getting the start of the dealer and where his cleverness
had an opportunity for exercise. The thought of getting something for
nothing was in the air, and to get the better of somebody was regarded
as proper and right.

Had a retail dealer then advertised One Price and no deviation to any
one, the customers would surely have given him absent treatment. The
verbal fencing, the forays of wit, the clash of accusation and the final
forlorn sigh of surrender of the seller, were things which the buyer
demanded as his, or more properly her, right.

Often these encounters attracted interested by-standers, who saw the
skilful buyer berate the seller and run down his goods, until the poor
man, abject and undone, gave up. To get the better of the male man and
force him to his knees is the pleasant diversion of a certain type of
feminine mind. Before marriage the woman always, I am told, takes this
high-handed attitude. Perhaps she dimly realizes that her time for
tyranny is short. To make the man a suppliant is the delight of her
soul. After marriage the positions are reversed. But in the good old
days, most women, not absolutely desiccated by age or ironed out by
life's vicissitudes, found a sort of secondary sexual delight in these
shopping assaults on the gentlemanly party on the other side of the
counter.

We have all seen women enter into heated arguments, and indulge in a
half-quarrel, with a