Shopman

“ He need not aim solely and directly at the good of the shop; for the simple reason that the shop is not aiming solely and directly at the good of the nation. The shopman is, under decent restraints, let us hope, trying to get what he can out of the nation; the shop assistant may, under the same decent restraints, get what he can out of the shopkeeper. ”

“ If the shopman should pursue you, as most probably he will, make him a low bow, and say that it was really quite an accident, and that of course you mean to pay him—indeed, yes, "on your honour!" If he won't believe you, punch him in the waistcoat, and batter him about with his barometer and warming-pan, or sausages and mutton. ”

“ Shop, to discharge a shopman. In military slang, to SHOP an officer is to put him under arrest in the guard-room. In pugilistic slang, to punish a man severely is “to knock him all over the SHOP,” i.e., the ring, the place in which the work is done.
Shop-bouncer, or SHOP-LIFTER, a person generally respectably attired, who, while being served with a small article at a shop, steals one of more value. Shakspeare has the word LIFTER, a thief.
Shop-walker, a person employed to walk up and down a shop, to hand seats to customers, and see that they are properly served. ”

“ In the last box, which is situated in the darkest and most obscure corner of the shop, considerably removed from either of the gas-lights, are a young delicate girl of about twenty, and an elderly female, evidently her mother from the resemblance between them, who stand at some distance back, as if to avoid the observation even of the shopman. ”

“ The business is managed by two or more servants or shopmen of different employers, exchanging their master’s goods; as, for instance, a shoemaker’s shopman receives shirts or other articles from a hosier’s, in return for a pair of boots. Another very ingenious method may be witnessed about eleven o’clock in the forenoon in any of the suburban districts of London. A butcher’s boy, with a bit of steak filched from his master’s shop, or from a customer, falls in with a neighbouring baker’s man, who has a loaf obtained in a similar manner. ”

“ The customers generally, however, seem unable to participate in the amusement derivable from this source, for an old sallow-looking woman, who has been leaning with both arms on the counter with a small bundle before her, for half an hour previously, suddenly interrupts the conversation by addressing the jewelled shopman—‘Now, Mr. ”

“ For a tradesman to open his shop in a place unresorted to, or in a place where his trade is not agreeable, and where it is not expected, it is no wonder if he has no trade. What retail trade would a milliner have among the fishmongers' shops on Fishstreet-hill, or a toyman about Queen-hithe? When a shop is ill chosen, the tradesman starves; he is out of the way, and business will not follow him that runs away from it: suppose a ship-chandler should set up in Holborn, or a block-maker in Whitecross Street, an anchor-smith at Moorgate, or a coachmaker in Redriff, and the like! ”

“ That here you see, and I could give many examples very like this, how, and in what manner, a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the way of his business—what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear in his business, and must not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust—he must have no passions, no fire in his temper—he must be all soft and smooth: nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his shop—he must be a perfect complete hypocrite, if he will be a complete tradesman. ”

“ He was in a mean shop, whose whole contents had been displayed in thick festoons, of jackets, shirts, and pantaloons, on the outside, where a man was pacing to and fro upon the pavement, whose vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by who chanced even to look, at his goods. ”

“ I make bold to say, there is not a trader any where who does not keep his confessor. The creature haunts the shop, till he almost seems the Genius of the Place, to the grievous prepossession of newspapers, and, what is more intolerable still, to the exclusive occupation of the ear of the worthy shopkeeper himself. ”

“ To end with a brief classification, it may be noted that there are dealers whose shops have private rooms in the rear where trade can be carried on in the same way as with a dealer who has no shop. From this double-faced form we pass to the real shopkeeper, the vaster class ranging from the vendor who can afford to fill his window with the choicest samples down to the modest curio shop, the benevolent harbour of the humbler modes of expressing art. ”

“ The youth himself stands prompt and alert behind his counter, never idling for a moment, nor permitting his shopboy to idle, but both busy, cutting, and brushing, and bustling about, whether there be any thing to do or not. If but an old lady be seen looking up at the window, or glancing in through the avenue of cheap prints that forms the doorway, what an angler-like eagerness in the mind of the trader that she would but walk in!—nothing more required—were she once within the shop, no fear but she is well done for. ”

“ The sight of a haberdasher’s shop, in its first and many-coloured dawn, with prints, and ribands, and shop-bills, flying in all directions—or of a provision shop, where hams project their noses into the very teeth, almost, of the passer by, and cheeses lie gaping with a quarter cut out, as if ready to eat rather than to be eaten—or of a bookseller’s shop, where every fresh and trig volume upon the counter seems as if it would take the slightest hint of your will, and, starting up, pack itself off, without any human intervention whatsoever, to your lodgings—is irresistible to these people. ”

“ Hark how the people talk of such conduct as the slothful negligent trader discovers in his way.
'Such a shop,' says the customer, 'stands well, and there is a good stock of goods in it, but there is nobody to serve but a 'prentice-boy or two, and an idle journeyman: one finds them always at play together, rather than looking out for customers; and when you come to buy, they look as if they did not care whether they showed you any thing or no. One never sees a master in the shop, if we go twenty times, nor anything that bears the face of authority. ”

“ The little shops pull at one's heart, so simple is their merchandise. A little window beckons us through which we peer with misted eyes. For narrow shops are often kind to tiny folk scarce counter-high. Above a shop, behind a blind, I've heard a little baby cry. Above a shop, I've often seen a mother's anxious face appear. How many customers have been? The closing hour is drawing near. Great shops, like temples dedicate to merchandise from every mart, are over-lords of their own fate—but little shops tug at the heart! ”

“ But to descend more into detail, there are still among its at any rate a limited number of shopkeepers who like to do their business on good, safe, and steady lines, and keep together a nice respectable connection by upholding the dependable quality of their wares. Some of these shopkeepers do not make much of an outward show, but I have reason to know that many of them in a quiet undemonstrative manner do a snug and prosperous trade without fuss or display. ”

“ The weaver, the shoemaker, the tailor, the barber, has the impudence, with the first money he gets, to dress himself like a tradesman of substance; the ordinary retailer, in the clothing of his wife, takes pattern from his neighbor, that deals in the same commodity by wholesale, and the reason he gives for it is, that, twelve years ago, the other had not a bigger shop than himself. ”

“ The current of our daily life, the springs of our activity or fortitude, may be supplied as well from hope as fear, from ‘cheerful and confident thoughts’ as the apparition of famine stalking just behind us. The merchant attends to his business, settles his accounts, and answers his correspondents as diligently and punctually as the shop-keeper. The shop-keeper minds his customers, and puffs off his goods, tells more lies, is a greater drudge, and gets less for his pains than the merchant. ”

“ In France there are no shop-men. No matter what is the article of trade—hats, boots, pictures, books, jewellery, anything or everything that gentlemen buy—you are waited upon by girls, always handsome, and always dressed in the height of the mode. They sit on damask-covered settees, behind the counters; and, when you enter, bow and rise to serve you, with a grace and a smile of courtesy that would become a drawing-room. ”

“ The shopkeeper sits on the floor of his shop, surrounded by his various goods. He never rises to customers, for everything is within reach of his hand. [402] Women never meddle with trade, which is solely in the hands of the men. ”

“ In the shop on the right of the building, we note the usual open shop-front with its counter, and the tradesman with a pair of scales; in the interior of the shop is an assistant who seems to be, with vigorous action, pounding something in a mortar, and so we conjecture the shop to be that of an apothecary. The costume of the man crossing the street, in long gown girded at the waist, may be compared with the merchants given in our last chapter, and with those in an engraving of a market-place at p. ”

“ Then one of the company cheapens something or other, making many words with the shopkeeper about the price, thereby giving an opportunity to some of his companions to hand things of value from one to another till they were insensibly vanished, the honest shopkeeper being left to deplore the misfortune of having such light-fingered customers find the way to his shop. ”

“ Such ribbons and shawls! and two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce. As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the ‘Co.’ We saw all this with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed—and so it was. ”

“ O'Finnigan sells peanut candy in her shop upon the sidewalk near the site of Corporal Thompson's Broadway Cottage, in the midst of the gay spectacle of a summer day. And within a stone's-toss of her stand how many fine houses you will see, and how many other fascinating shops! Our English ancestors were called a shopkeeping nation by Napoleon; but it is his own Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who have the true secret of shopkeeping. They make shops fascinating. They have made shopkeeping a fine art. ”

“ Some of these salesmen scowl as soon as the shop-door is opened, and they have to rise from some thrilling book, or they get interrupted in some other pleasant occupation. The greater the variety of goods you wish to look at, the more questions you ask as to their make and durability, the greater does the ire of the salesman become. Rather than fetch any article from another part of the magazine, he tells you at once they have not got it in stock. ”

“ A LITTLE SHOPPING
As he spoke, we came suddenly out of the woodland into a short street of handsomely built houses, which my companion named to me at once as Piccadilly: the lower part of these I should have called shops, if it had not been that, as far as I could see, the people were ignorant of the arts of buying and selling. Wares were displayed in their finely designed fronts, as if to tempt people in, and people stood and looked at them, or went in and came out with parcels under their arms, just like the real thing. ”

“ On the contrary, the customers, who are the substantial dependence of a tradesman's shop, are such as are gained and preserved by good usage, good pennyworths, good wares, and good choice; and a shop that has the reputation of these four, like good wine that needs no bush, needs no painting and gilding, no carved works and ornaments; [31] it requires only a diligent master and a faithful servant, and it will never want a trade. ”

“ Everything you sell, whatever its price, will be the genuine thing—straight from the East. We associate shop-keeping with the huckstering ideas of a servile class. I’ve often wanted to prove that shop-keeping, all trade, can be ennobled. ”

“ His shop is situated on one of the most busy streets in the city; and long before the stores are opened, or the busy hum of human voices heard, the lively glow of the blacksmith’s fire and the unceasing blowing of his bellows, whisper in the ear of many a tardy young man—Be diligent in business. ”

“ By degree this gift money grew to be demanded as a right; and by-and-by comes thrifty Master Tradesman, and pops the broad pieces into his till, calling them premium. Poor little shopkeepers in this “silver age” will take a ’prentice from the parish for five pounds, or from an acquaintance that is broken, for nothing perhaps, and will teach him the great arts and mysteries of sweeping out the shop, sleeping under the counter, fetching his master from the tavern or the mughouse when a customer comes in, or waiting at table ”

“ The skilled artisan who worked at home and either made goods for a master or sold to the trade verged into the shop keeping class. On the other hand, the lowest type of shopkeeper, the chandler, the dealer in old iron, the tripe shop, the milk retailer, the keeper of a cook shop or a green cellar belonged to the class of casual and unskilled labor. ”

“ But, happening to look up while we both stood silent, the lady examining the handkerchiefs, and I doing nothing till she should have made up her mind, I caught sight of the eyes of the shop-walker, as they call the man who shows customers where to go for what they want, and sees that they are attended to. He is a fat man, dressed in black, with a great gold chain, which they say in the shop is only copper gilt. ”