Storeroom

“ Package is weighed by Summerfield, Lois, and Ruthven. Nine pounds. Unknown to Summerfield, but with knowledge of Lois, Ruthven puts private pencil mark on package. Tuesday evening, after nine. Weasel Morrison's telegram about the "canister" is received by McKenzie. That night, McKenzie opens window in rear of storeroom and removes package to add still another article to its contents. When he comes to put back the counterfeit package and take original, he is interfered with by night watchman and gives up the attempt for the night. ”

“ The shop-girl whom you will hire, our head clerk, and your lady's-maid (yes, Madame, you are to have one!) will sleep on the second floor. On the third will be the kitchen and rooms of the cook and the man-of-all-work. The fourth shall be a general store-house for bottle, crystals, and porcelains. The workshop for our people, in the attic! Passers-by shall no longer see them gumming on the labels, making the bags, sorting the flasks, and corking the phials. Very well for the Rue Saint-Denis, but for the Rue Saint-Honore—fy! bad style! Our shop must be as comfortable as a drawing-room. ”

“ It was, in fact, the store-room or garret for the household. There was bedding piled up, boxes and chests, mill sacks, the winter store of apples and nuts, bundles of old clothes, broken furniture, and many other things. No sooner were we up there, than the old woman dragged the ladder, by which we had ascended, away with a chuckle, as if she was now secure that we could do no mischief, and sat herself down again once more, to doze and await her master's return. ”

“ As every house has a garden, each family raises its own vegetables, and some poultry, and each family has also its own bakeoven. For such things as are not raised in Economy, there is a store provided, from which members with the knowledge of the directors, may purchase what is necessary, and the people of the vicinity may also do the same. The warehouse and store are for the present in wooden buildings, but in a short time the requisite brick buildings will be erected. ”

“ The back shop, according to the profession, serves as a store, a laboratory, or a dining-room; the gallery is, properly speaking, nothing more than a warehouse for the shop, containing a reserve of the articles sold, which are arranged in it with great order; the two little rooms adjoining, usually encumbered with chests and bales, afford an asylum during the night to two or three shopmen, while the terrace is used for airing goods that have been a long time warehoused, to beat stuffs, and, in the case of the druggists, to dry plants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the country a good store-room is so indispensable that where there is none it ought to be built; it should be on the same floor with, and as near as possible to, the kitchen; and as this would be on the ground floor, it would be necessary to make a cellar underneath, or to raise the building a little distance from the ground, to prevent its being damp, above all things to be guarded against, in a place where stores are kept. ”

“ At last I reached the object of my quest, a dirty fly-blown little shop in a byway near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical photographs. The shop was old-fashioned and low and dark, and the house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. ”

“ The stock of volumes in the library is on the increase; the window, counter, shelves and drawers, are all well filled; Mr. Wesden deals in postage and receipt stamps—ever a good sign of capital to spare—and has turned the wash-house into a warehouse, where reams of paper, envelopes, and goods too numerous to mention, are biding their time to see daylight in Great Suffolk Street. ”

“ The rear of a ten-cent store shows a gush of brightness, where some overhauling of stock is going on. The back door is open, and looking in I can see a riotous mouse darting about under the counters, warily watching the men who are rearranging some display. ”

“ The geography of the shop was explained to him before entering. The stationery counter was on the right as soon as you passed the door. The children's books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a cheap circulating library were back of that, and opposite these, where the shop was dark, were the wallpapers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. She was going to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front part of the shop, and close to the counter with the children's books. ”

“ Into the quiet of his office filtered a hum of activity exquisite to his ears, the clicking of billing-machines, the whirr of parcel-carriers, the sound of customers’ voices, buying merchandise. Out there the store was smoothly functioning, supplying modern civilization to ten thousand men and women. And it was his store! Not only did he reap the profit—that was a small part of his pleasure. It was his personality which gave all those people the opportunity to satisfy their needs, that was educating them to desire better things. ”

“ The best stores here have very little appearance, from the outside, of being stores at all. Perhaps, as a sign, there is one elegant vase, or a choice piece of drapery in the window; but upon stepping within, room after room filled with exquisite goods surprises you—rare laces, china, furniture, antiques, and everything else beautiful to tempt one to buy. ”

“ The plate glass windows of every store lay in thousands of pieces below their sashes, and the entire stock of merchandise whether furniture or drapery, groceries or dairy products, had been hurled through them into the middle of the thoroughfare. Above these were piled pell-mell bedding and chairs, wardrobes and wash basins, all splintered and broken—the whole making the most pitiable conglomeration I ever hope to witness. ”

“ A little ingenuity, a little taste, an idea of the harmony of colors can do wonders in the interior of any store, no matter what the character of the stock may be, or its quality or quantity. The thing to do is to let your goods tell some clear, legible story that shall be as plain to your customers as was the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace to Daniel, the prophet. ”

“ I voiced a thought.
"There must be an awful lot of old timers died this spring. You can't cut them off short and hope to save them."
Bill grunted.
We entered the store. It smelled good, as such stores always do—soap, leather, ground coffee, bacon, cheese—all sorts of things. On the right ran a counter and shelves of dry goods and clothing; on the left groceries, cigars, and provisions generally. Down the middle saddles, ropes, spurs, pack outfits, harness, hardware. ”

“ Perhaps when we make use of the term ‘Brokers’ Shop,’ the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers’ shops ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sometimes three or four persons will crowd into this box called a shop. The bazaar is a noisy as well as a crowded place, for to the buzz of talk and the cries of the itinerant venders is added the clang of the goldsmiths' hammers; it winds down into the recesses of decaying houses and emerges in another direction. ”

“ The warehouse is open, several barrows and men are before it, they are piling up the goods: a short figure that I could not make out in the dark, panting and whining, screaming and grumbling, is shuffling and tumbling about. I make up to the fellows with the stolen goods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Boppert when I saw her, I followed the woman into the most crowded room I ever entered. The shop was nothing to it; there you could move without hitting anything; here you could not. There were tables against every wall, and chairs where there were no tables. Opposite me was a window-ledge filled with flowering plants, and at my right a grate and mantel-piece covered, that is the latter, with innumerable small articles which had evidently passed a long and forlorn probation on the shop shelves before being brought in here. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. ”

“ And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is just a stepping-stone to better things. ”

“ On the shelf are foodstuffs, Very lights, a couple of rockets, a knobkerrie, a copy of Punch, a shortbread tin full of candles, a map, an automatic pistol, and, most curiously, a dust-encrusted French cookery-book, which has taken on the qualities of an antique, and become a kind of landlord's fixture among 'trench stores' in the eyes of the ever-changing succession of company commanders who have 'taken over,' week in and week out, since the French occupation in '14. ”

“ If another customer came along they’d have to stop in the middle of a sale and refer him to a clerk around in the other aisle.
“A furnishing goods department should be continuous. The sale of a shirt will lead to the purchase of a tie or a collar or hosiery. The goods should be in sight so that they automatically suggest themselves.
“You enter this store and the first impression you get is a big clothing store. That is what you want. Clothing dominates the store. Furnishing goods and hats are important and necessary side lines. ”

“ The forlorn aspect of the ruined shop told the gloomy facts with unmistakable clearness. So few assistants, so pitiably few customers, such a beggarly array of goods! Those shelves have all been dressed with dummies; those rolls of rich silk are composed of a wooden block, some paper, and half a yard of soiled material; within those huge presses you will find only darkness. Emptiness, desolation, death! ”

“ Man stepped out of a place that I learned later was a kind of store where they sell things, and the new Mr. Man took our box and set it in front of his store, and put a card on it with some words that said, 'For Sale,' and threw us in some green stuff to eat, and there we were, among ever so many things that we had never seen before. ”

“ The woman who shops for a dress, hat, or coat in a modern store neither expects nor desires to see the entire stock or any considerable part of it. She is comfortably seated in a well-lighted room which contains little, if any, exposed merchandise. The salesperson, after a quick mental appraisal, asks a few leading questions, and brings from the stockroom one, two, or possibly three models, carefully chosen on the basis of suitability, size, and style. If these are rejected they are removed, and a second small selection brought out. ”

“ The store itself was a long, low, tumble-down-looking place, with a shed running along its front, under which might almost always be seen a certain number of miserably dressed persons, the customers of the store. ”

“ The retail counters extend back for eighty feet, and, being double, afford counter-room of One Hundred and Sixty feet in length. There is also over Three Thousand feet of shelving in the retail part of the store alone. This part is devoted to the retail business, and as it is the most spacious in the country, furnishes also the best and largest assortment of all kinds of books to be found in the country. It is fitted up in the most superb style; the shelvings are all painted in Florence white, with gilded cornices for the book shelves. ”

“ The center shelving will always have stock boxes piled on top and that will throw one side of the store always in shadow. Besides, this arrangement divides the trade and screens half of it from view.
“The stock is cut in two and looks small.
“One salesman can not wait on the furnishing goods trade without neglecting half of it all the time. If you have two clerks, a customer must be taken from one side to the other for his ties or underwear, and there you are again, both on one side at the same time. ”