Kiosk

“ One point, however, I specially noticed in the management of the street-car lines which certainly puts us to shame at home. At converging and intersecting comers there will be found a small kiosk, in which sits a man whose duty it is to shift the points for cars going in different directions. This he does by moving a little lever no bigger than a man's finger, which at the same time shifts the points for a coming car and shows a light at the summit of the kiosk, as a signal that the road is clear. ”

“ In one of the kiosks a lecture on "Sick Leave and how to spend it," by the Earl and the Doctor, might be delivered hourly. In another kiosk, official C.B.'s would be on show; Jubilee C.B.'s being classed together on one side, and special prominence being given to those C.B.'s who hadn't applied for the honour, and to those who had obtained it for real services otherwise unrecognised. After dark the "Treasury Ring" might join hands and dance round the flashing light of their own unassisted intellect. ”

“ Excuse me: I am going across to get an English paper. The woman at the kiosk, who sells them, is a charming character: she compliments my accent by pretending to think that I am French. Go in: I beg you not to wait for me.
(They see him cross the street, with his accustomed air of leisurely deliberation—a little amused to notice how the vehement traffic has to pause and make way for [Pg 63] him. At the kiosk he and the woman exchange words and smiles. He lifts his hat and turns away.)
L.H. (startled) . He’s not coming back?
R.R. Harvey Jerrold wants kicking. Poor Oscar! ”

“ It is a very comfortable pleasant country seat, without containing any furniture of a costly description; the usual display of Oriental taste and magnificence being lavished on the baths, which are situated at a short distance from the main building, in a delightfully secluded spot; and are as splendid and luxurious as art can render them. The little valley in which the kiosk stands has been entirely enclosed by stone walls, in order to form gardens and pleasure-grounds ”

“ The kiosk, Pharaoh's bed, a roofless hall, belongs to the Greek and Roman period, and consists of fourteen great columns with capitals of various patterns, joined at the lower part by solid walls, 63 feet long and 48 feet wide. ”

“ These houses are called kiosks, and they take the place of the newspaper stands in our country. As far as possible, the French like to make their useful things ornamental, and these kiosks add very much to the appearance of the streets. ”

“ A woman in a sidewalk kiosk is ranging morning papers on her narrow shelf. A half-grown girl in a small booth set in the middle of the square where the tracks of the tramway end, is selling street car tickets to working men in blouses and baggy corduroy trousers. Hucksters and barrow-men have established a small market along the curbing of the pavement. A waiter is mopping the metal tops of a row of little round tables under the glass markee of a café. ”

“ The business on the floor was in full swing when he came out on to the marble gallery of the vast, square marble hall of the Exchange, and the busy swarm of money-gathering men beneath his eyes immediately stopped to cheer him. To look down, as he did, was to look down upon the floor of some great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks spaced apart, about which men congregate only to divide and go all ways; these kiosks might easily be booths. The floor itself is in constant movement; it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding about always in unconjectural movements. ”

“ Kipps goes inside the desk, the desk which is to be the strategic centre of the shop, brushes away some sawdust, and draws out the marvellous till; here gold is to be, here silver, here copper—notes locked up in a cash-box in the well below. Then he leans his elbows on the desk, rests his chin on his fist and fills the shelves with imaginary stock; books beyond reading. Every day a man who cares to wash his hands and read uncut pages artfully may have his cake and eat it, among that stock. Under the counter to the right, paper and string are to lurk ready to leap up and embrace goods sold ”

“ The fittings are perfect, as perfect as in a London bank, and there is an air of extreme precision. Yonder open drawers are full of pass-books; upon the desks and on the broad mantelpiece are piles of cheques, not scattered in disorder but arranged in exact heaps. The very inkstands are heavy and vast, and you just catch a glimpse round the edge of the semi-sentry box which guards the desk of the chief cashier, of a ledger so huge that the mind can hardly realise the extent of the business which requires such ponderous volumes to record it. ”

“ Inside the store, a long hat-pin box makes a counter. Flowers, leaves, pretty pebbles, shells, and little toys such as you may find among your own playthings may be displayed upon the counter.
A roly-poly tumble toy will make a clerk for the store, or, if you like, you may find both clerk and customers in magazine pictures, and you can mount them on thin cardboard and cut them out. There is no end to the plays you can invent when your store is finished. Polly Ann of shoe-box cottage, Boxville, has just come to the store to buy a loaf of bread. ”

“ Against one of these columns not far off stood a desk with a great lantern over it, and on the desk lay a large thick book, like a merchant's "blotter." Near this were chests of tea, with Chinese figures marked on them--evidently original packages--piled up to a great height, and everywhere that I looked were empty boxes and casks, piled in a certain business-like order. Many a year must have passed ere all these boxes were emptied and all these casks drained; many a dollar must have been lost and won in the process, and many a human life must have been risked, and probably lost too. ”

“ As I examined the curious heterogeneous collection of things for sale, I heard the clink of coins being poured out on the lid of a desk or an uncovered table, and the murmur of voices floated out to me. I was now near the entrance of the shop, and by a sleight-of-hand trick, keeping the corner of my eye on the glass pane of the private office, I removed the key of the front door without a sound, and took an impression of it in wax, returning the key to its place unobserved. At this moment another young man came in, and walked straight past me into the private office. ”

“ Here, then, is the receiving department of this great single retailing machine of modern business. It keeps over three hundred human units constantly upon the move—and, mind you, all that these people are doing is merely making the merchandise ready to sell. The next step is the final one before actual sale; the display of proffered goods—upon the counters and within the plate-glass windows along the street frontages.
This, in the modern department-store, is considered a feature of the utmost importance, and nowhere more so than at Macy's. ”

“ When in quest of articles of coquetry, you mounted from the shop by a curving stair, and your head gradually rose level with a large apartment having a mahogany counter in front of the window and along one side, yellow linoleum on the floor, many cardboard boxes, a magnificent hinged cheval glass, and two chairs. The window-sill being lower than the counter, there was a gulf between the panes and the back of the counter, into which important articles such as scissors, pencils, chalk, and artificial flowers were continually disappearing: another proof of the architect's incompetence. ”

“ In addition to window display, newspaper and magazine announcements, it is the concern of the advertising department to provide the store with its sign cards and special-price tickets. These are all a part of the big problem of letting the public know about Macy goods. [Pg 177] Yet above and beyond all of these things, the store's supreme advertisement, if you please, is the establishment itself, the service that it strives so sincerely to give. To use the current phrase of expert publicity men, the store, its salespeople and its prices must sell Macy's to the outside world. ”

“ But the counter, facing the shelves of dress-goods for the women, is free of obstructions, and its surface is worn smooth and polished by the years of unrolling of bolts of cloth, while at every quarter-yard along the counter's rear edge is a shining brass tack-head—the yardstick of the department. ”

“ Next time she passes that way she calls in the shop, visits the refreshment department, where refreshments are dispensed free of charge, lolls awhile on a sofa in the reading-room, where the newspapers are kept for the use of customers, retires to the writing-room, conducts her day's correspondence on stationery provided by the establishment, and finally, as she is passing out, informs the cashier that she has bought something which she desires to return. ”

“ A Ticket Office should be built at the entrance to the yard. This can be made out of two boxes, one set on top of the other, as shown in Fig. 266. Cut an opening fifteen inches square in the front for a window, round the top, and make a guard of wooden strips [Pg 258] to fit it. Cut a slot in the counter, fastening a box beneath it in which to drop tickets, and for a cash drawer fasten strips to the under side of the counter, as shown in Fig. 266, so that a cigar-box will slide upon them. ”

“ Most of the shops are tiny affairs only six or eight feet square, which open on the street for their entire width and have the floor raised to about the height of the customer’s waist. The resemblance of a bazaar to a long double row of pigeon-holes is increased by the manner in which the box-like recesses follow continuously one after the other, with no doorways between, as the entrance to their upper stories is by ladders in the rear. ”

“ There is a special trade department at Stepney Causeway, consisting of a show-room and several large and airy stores. These storage rooms, which are not open to the general public, contain a most extraordinary collection of gifts, including such articles as bedsteads, false hair and teeth, old pictures, jewellery, a microscopic cabinet, a three-manual organ, an oak lectern, boxes of geological and ornithological specimens, air pillows, sewing and sausage machines, a bottled snake, as well as a great variety of clothing both new and secondhand. ”

“ The chief objection to card cabinets or drawers is the insurmountable one of limitation to public use being fixed by the number of drawers or cabinets. With drawers in a counter front one consulter monopolises one drawer, while with tiers of three or four drawers in cabinet form never more than two persons can use it with any comfort. The exposure of only one title at a time is another serious drawback, while the peculiar daintiness of touch requisite for the proper manipulation of the cards makes the use of the catalogue a labour and a perplexity to working people with hardened finger-tips. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. In the back-parlour of a bookseller's shop, between the Strand and the Embankment, three persons sat at tea; the proprietor of the shop, a gray little man with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife, and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one. The girl apparently was a visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her. ”

“ Parcel desks are usually conveniently located at all counters, for the purpose of examining and wrapping goods sold. All goods sold, whether taken by customers or sent by the delivery, should first pass through the parcel desk. Goods sold should be passed to the parcel desk by the salesperson with the bill, and they should always be examined carefully, to see that they correspond. Price, quantity, number of yards, etc., should be checked and goods should be examined, to insure their being in perfect condition, not cracked, soiled, or injured in any way. ”

“ The variety stores devote the minimum amount of display space consistent with adequate merchandising-consisting usually of nothing more than a place on the counter for the catalogues, with the patterns themselves stored underneath the counter in the steel cabinets furnished by Simplicity. In contrast, the fabric stores usually provide tables and chairs where the customers may peruse the catalogues in comfort and at their leisure. ”

“ If you would give a regal gift to the Monarch of Culinaria, the kitchen cabinet is the thing. It is compact little kitchen “with everything in it but the kitchen stove,” and fills the need of the worker in the badly planned and equipped city kitchen and the unplanned kitchen out of town.
Although not exclusively a kitchen gift, the vacuum cleaner cannot be excelled as a present. Once bestowed you are looked upon as a fairy god-parent. Why not give one for a wedding present sometime? ”

“ The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. ”

“ The part now dedicated to the public might be part of a first-class banking establishment. Entering by a spacious doorway, with a lofty vestibule, there is accommodation for a score of people to stand in the ante-room and leisurely transact their business. Then there runs along the whole length of the first or public room a substantial mahogany counter, behind which the clerks stand to answer inquiries and attend to the ordinary daily business. There is a desk for the money-order clerk, and drawers in which postage-stamps are kept. ”