I
have noticed lots of people about who have struck me in a new light as
triumphs of the salesman, masterpieces in the art of incongruity; age in
the garb of youth, corpulence put off with the size called "slender
men's"; unhappy, gentle, quiet men with ties like oriflammes, breasts
like a kingfisher's, and cataclysmal trouser patterns. Even so, if the
shopkeeper had his will, should we all be. Those poor withered maiden
ladies, too, who fill us with a kind of horror, with their juvenile
curls, their girlish crudity of colouring, their bonnets, giddy,
tottering, hectic. It overcomes me with remorse to think that I myself
have accused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hear
the thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they are
simply short-sighted trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesman
and saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even.... And
somewhere in the world a draper goes unhung.

However, the gloves are bought. I select a pair haphazard, and he
pretends to perceive they fit perfectly by putting them over the back of
my hand. I make him assure me of the fit, and then buy the pair and
proceed to take my old ones off and put the new on grimly. If they split
or the fingers are too long--glovemakers have the most erratic
conceptions of the human finger--I have to buy another pair.

But the trouble only begins when you have bought your thing. "Nothing
more, sir?" he says. "Nothing," I say. "Braces?" he says. "No, thank
you," I say. "Collars, cuffs?" He looks at mine swiftly but keenly, and
with an unendurable suspicion.

He goes on, item after item. Am I in rags, that I should endure this
thing? And I get sick of my everlasting "No, thank you"--the monotony
shows up so glaringly against his kaleidoscope variety. I feel all the
unutterable pettiness, the mean want of enterprise of my poor little
purchase compared with the catholic fling he suggests. I feel angry with
myself for being thus played upon, furiously angry with him. "_No, no_!"
I say.

"These tie-holders are new." He proceeds to show me his infernal
tie-holders. "They prevent the tie puckering," he says with his eye on
mine. It's no good. "How much?" I say.

This whets him to further outrage. "Look here, my man!" I say at last,
goaded to it, "I came here for gloves. After endless difficulties I at
last induced you to let me have gloves. I have also been intimidated, by
the most shameful hint