William Cyples

“ For there are shopmen, store-keepers, and errand-boys, who unbar and fasten doors, take down and put up shutters, and sit behind counters and desks, with just as much regularity as though the premises were district branches of the Bank of England, set up in out-of-the-way places for the convenience of stray populations. It is suggested by their manner and appearance, that they always labour under the delusion that business is to commence on the day following: and they are simply there for twelve, fifteen, or twenty years, getting things into shape to begin fairly the next morning. ”

“ These no-places of business, it is unnecessary to observe, are not located all in one quarter;—there is not a special colony of these monks of commerce, these nuns of trade, where the stricken harts of the vending world go weep in herds. ”

“ Some again—and these may be of either sex—are people who have gained a hard-earned competency elsewhere, and have once retired, but who, finding themselves dying in dull, foolish houses without shops to them, creep back into sham places of business to pass the time in the old routine. ”

“ If a customer ever intended to come, he ought to have made up his mind, and presented himself years ago: ere the stock had spoiled, the scales rusted, the drawers grown fastened in their holes, the ink in the stand dried up, and the pen become green with mould. A romance worth a fortune to a modern novelist attaches to many of these places and persons, if the particulars were only hunted up. ”

“ Others of the same sex are ladies who perchance would have made an excellent affair of it, if they had ever succeeded in achieving that initial stroke of business with which the widows commenced; but who, as the unwedded successors of parents or aunts and uncles, instead of husbands, never quite settle down to their position until very late in life. ”

“ As a rule, indeed, it may be stated that after persons have kept a shop for twenty-five or thirty years, they pass into the bust stage. They are, practically, no longer full-length figures, although they may appear to be so: but are busts, cut off at the height of the counter, higher or lower, just as it happens. In some cases, where a man has only held intercourse with his kind for that space from behind a tall desk, he is not even a bust, but extends no lower than his shoulders—a sort of antiquated commercial cherub. ”

“ For those people to be pushed out, or for them voluntarily of themselves to wander forth into society, unsheltered and exposed from head to foot, is a species of indecency; and it is no matter of surprise that after roaming about in the world unsteadily for a short time, they generally lose their balance, and fall flat into their coffins. ”

“ Men having once formed habits, no matter of what kind, preaching or housebreaking, are loth to give them up, and in every department of human occupation these innocent impositions are going on. Even authorship, we magnanimously admit, is not exempt. ”

“ Here and there, it is true, you stumble upon awfully cheerful people in such places, but these are impostors; they will lock up the place for a week and go down into the country, or, at other times, go wandering off into the parks at mid-day. They, consequently, would be unable to swear that a customer had not disgraced the premises by a visit in their absence! Many of the genuine class are old men who have broken down in large concerns ”