ere they have always great choice to please
the curious, and to supply whatever is called for. And thus the trade
runs away insensibly to the shops which are best sorted.

3. The retail tradesman in especial, but even every tradesman in his
station, must furnish himself with a competent stock of patience; I
mean, that patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of
impertinence, and the most provoking curiosity, that it is possible to
imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are or can be guilty of. A
tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no
passions, no resentment. He must never be angry; no, not so much as seem
to be so. If a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods,
and scarce bids money for any thing--nay, though they really come to his
shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold,
and if they cannot be better pleased than they are at some other shop
where they intend to buy, it is all one, the tradesman must take it, and
place it to the account of his calling, that it is his business to be
ill used, and resent nothing; and so must answer as obligingly to those
that give him an hour or two's trouble and buy nothing, as he does to
those who in half the time lay out ten or twenty pounds. The case is
plain: it is his business to get money, to sell and please; and if some
do give him trouble and do not buy, others make him amends, and do buy;
and as for the trouble, it is the business of his shop.

I have heard that some ladies, and those, too, persons of good note,
have taken their coaches and spent a whole afternoon in Ludgate Street
or Covent Garden, only to divert themselves in going from one mercer's
shop to another, to look upon their fine silks, and to rattle and banter
the journeymen and shopkeepers, and have not so much as the least
occasion, much less intention, to buy any thing; nay, not so much as
carrying any money out with them to buy anything if they fancied it: yet
this the mercers who understand themselves know their business too well
to resent; nor if they really knew it, would they take the least notice
of it, but perhaps tell the ladies they were welcome to look upon their
goods; that it was their business to show them; and that if they did not
come to buy now, they might perhaps see they were furnished to please
them when they might have occasion.

On the other hand, I have been told that sometimes those sorts of
ladie