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In Manchester there are only woollen socks, heavier or lighter, to be bought, and the shopmen smile pityingly if you say, in your strange madness, that woollen socks are not for summer wear. Possibly, however, it was not summer in Manchester, and we were misled by the almanac.
Even the weary shopmen and shop-girls, released from the day's labours, hurried past him homeward, and the sleepy cabman whipped up his horse for his last fare before going home, and the tramps and beggars vanished down their alleys, and sought every man his home. Home!
Will you amuse yourself with these trifles while something better is preparing?" Here one of the shopmen brought a bowl, into which he poured sherbet of the distilled juice of the lotus-flower mingled with rose-water. The master placed this also before Yussuf, and entreated him to eat; but Yussuf, affecting the great man, held his head up in the air and would not even look that way.
Caddis, if he had the seat in his pocket, had it from the support of a class trusting him to support its interests: he could count on the landowners, on the clergy, on the retired or retiring or comfortably cushioned merchants resident about Wrensham, on the many obsequious among electoral shopmen; annually he threw open his grounds, and he subscribed, patronized, did what was expected; and he was not popular; he was unpopular.
Philip knew little of all this. He was very busy with facts and figures, doggedly fighting through the necessary business, and only now and then allowing himself the delicious relaxation of going to Haytersbank in an evening, to inquire after his aunt's health, and to see Sylvia; for the two Fosters were punctiliously anxious to make their shopmen test all their statements; insisting on an examination of the stock, as if Hepburn and Coulson were strangers to the shop; having the Monkshaven auctioneer in to appraise the fixtures and necessary furniture; going over the shop books for the last twenty years with their successors, an employment which took up evening after evening; and not unfrequently taking one of the young men on the long commercial journeys which were tediously made in a gig.
If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies! Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any longer into deep wells. Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and accomplisheth itself.
"Then steamers carry a mob, and I detest mobs, especially such ones as they delight in greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians, squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about, because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men, bonnet men, iron men, trinket men, and every sort of shopmen, who severally know nothing in the world but silk, cotten, bonnets, iron, trinkets, and so on, and can't talk of anythin' else; fellows who walk up and down the deck, four or five abreast when there are four or five of the same craft on board, and prevent any one else from promenadin' by sweepin' the whole space, while every lurch the ship gives, one of them tumbles atop of you, or treads on your toes, and then, instead of apoligisin', turns round and abuses you like a pick-pocket for stickin' your feet out and trippin' people up.
As one sees it in the London suburbs devoted to clerks and shopmen, it stands back a yard or so from the road, with a gate and a railing, and a patch, perhaps two feet wide, of gravel between its front and the pavement.
Soon the shopmen and traders will be the fine gentlemen of the land, and we may hope for the pickings and leavings of their tables. What does it matter to me? I shall not be troubled by it. And if I be not troubled thereby, what matter if all the world goes mad?
Now, when the publisher smiles, and the shopmen bow, and I am acknowledged to have a bank in my brains, now, you cannot be offended to receive it back. Adieu. When my mind is in train again, and I feel my step firm on the old dull road, I will come to see you. Till then, yours by what name? Open the Biographical Dictionary at hazard, and send me one.
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