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Updated: May 6, 2025


A provision-dealer opened not long since a shop in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris, and sent round circulars to all the housekeepers in the neighborhood announcing his determination of paying no percentage to servants. The consequence was, that not one of the cooks would buy anything of him, and he has been forced to break up his establishment and depart.

With that intense practicalness which goes with his spiritual exaltation he has appointed a grocer and a provision-dealer to control the food-supplies of the country, has put a ship-owner at the head of the mercantile marine, has given to a man who was a working steel-smelter the unshackled control of labor, has chosen as another Cabinet Minister a young American who has made a fortune in business staggering appointments indeed for conservative old England.

Our landlord appeared to be "dead broke," but finally persuaded the reluctant provision-dealer to go away with his pockets filled with "I.O.U.'s" instead of cash, and about midnight on the verge of starvation we fully appreciated an abundant feast. We soon found that our, enthusiastic friend was trying to do a million dollar business on a one dollar capital.

No ship-chandler or provision-dealer ever showed her receipted bills, and not a few of them openly averred that certain burglaries of their goods had plausible connection with her presence in port.

Peter lunched with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. The lunch hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few days later, served to continue it. The dealer's family were not very enthusiastic about Peter. "He knows nothing but grub talk," grumbled the heir apparent, who from the proud altitude of a broker's office, had come to scorn the family trade.

She sold the vegetables and the currants and gooseberries which grew in the little patch of garden, and her friend, Anne Hilton, carried her eggs to the market-town for her every week, where she disposed of them to a provision-dealer of the same denomination. Even the hen-run had been made by the blind woman, who was a continual source of astonishment and questioning from the neighbours.

With a soft smile she looked up at the proud façade of this building, the windows of which were brilliantly illumined, and in whose parlors some banker or ennobled provision-dealer was now perhaps giving a ball; pointing to these windows with her slender white hand, she said: "I wished to see this house, in order to reproach myself for having been unhappy in it; yes, I then dared to complain even in the midst of so much splendor; I was so far from dreaming of the weight of the misfortune that was one day to come upon me ."

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