d write a novel that didn't have any damned
_purpose_ in it!"

Verily, Jimmie is no fool.

CHAPTER XIII

SHOPPING EXPERIENCES

In going to Europe timid persons often cover their real design by
claiming the intention of taking German baths, of "doing" Switzerland,
or of learning languages. But everybody knows that the real reason why
most women go abroad is to shop. What cathedral can bring such a look of
rapture to a woman's face as New Bond Street or what scenery such
ecstasy as the Rue de la Paix?

Therefore, as I believe my lot in shopping to be the common lot of all,
let me tell my tale, so that to all who have suffered the same agonies
and delights this may come as a personal reminiscence of their own,
while to you who have Europe yet to view for that blissful first time,
which is the best of all, this is what you will go through.

When I first went to Europe I had all of the average American woman's
timidity about asserting herself in the face of a shopgirl or salesman.
Many years of shopping in America had thoroughly broken a spirit which
was once proud. I therefore suffered unnecessary annoyance during my
first shopping in London, because I was overwhelmingly polite and
affable to the man behind the counter. I said "please," and "If you
don't mind," and "I would like to see," instead of using the martial
command of the ordinary Englishwoman, who marches up to the show-case in
flat-heeled boots and says in a tone of an officer ordering "Shoulder
arms," "Show me your gauze fans!" I used to listen to them standing next
me at a counter, momentarily expecting to see them knocked down by the
indignant salesman and carried to a hospital in an ambulance.

My own tones were so conversational when I said, "Will you please show
me your black satin ribbon?" that, while I did not say it, my voice
implied such questions as "How are your father and mother?" and "I hope
the baby is better?" and "Doesn't that draught there on your back annoy
you?" and "Don't you get very tired standing up all day?"

It was Bee, as usual, who gave me my first lesson in the insolent
bearing which alone obtains the best results from the average British
shopman.

Still without having thoroughly asserted myself, not having been to that
particular manner born, I went next to Paris, where my politeness met
with the just reward which virtue is always supposed to get and seldom
does.

I consider shopping in Paris one of the greatest