lish
immensely, and eat and drink a good deal more of both than was good for
us."

After such a week's work one would think the clerks would have required
rest on Sunday. But they did not get much. The store was open from eight
until church time, which was then eleven o'clock; and this was one of
the most profitable mornings of the week. The old gentleman explains why
it was so. Almost all factories, shops, and stores were then kept open
very late, and the last thing done in them was to pay wages, which was
seldom accomplished until after midnight. Hence the apparent necessity
for the Sunday morning's business.

Another great evil mentioned by our chronicler grew out of this bad
system of all work and no play. The clerks, released from business
towards midnight, were accustomed to go to a tavern and spend part of
the night in drinking and carousing; reeling home at a late hour, much
the worse for drink, and unfit for business in the morning until they
had taken another glass. All day the clerks were in the habit of
slipping out without their hats to the nearest tap-room for beer.

Nor was the system very different in New York. An aged book-keeper, to
whom I gave an outline of the old gentleman's narrative, informs me that
forty years ago the clerks, as a rule, were detained till very late in
the evening, and often went from the store straight to a drinking-house.

Now let us see how it fared with the public who depended upon these
stores for their dry-goods. From our old gentleman's account it would
seem that every transaction was a sort of battle between the buyer and
seller to see which should cheat the other. On the first day of his
attendance he witnessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexterous
clerk could sell an article to a lady which she did not want. An
unskillful clerk had displayed too suddenly the entire stock of the
goods of which she was in search; upon which she rose to leave, saying
that there was nothing she liked. A more experienced salesman then
stepped up.

"Walk this way, madam, if you please, and I will show you something
entirely different, with which I am sure you will be quite delighted."

He took her to the other end of the store, and then going back to the
pile which she had just rejected, snatched up several pieces, and sold
her one of them almost immediately. Customers, the old merchant says,
were often bullied into buying things they did not want.

"Many a half-frightened girl,"