life; his shoulders would have carried with dignity the golden chain of
office of the mayoralty of a considerable city; he would have looked a
perfect chairman of a jury at a Coroner's inquest; as the Head of a
pious Guild in a church he might almost be confused with the figures of
the stained glass windows; marching at the head of a brass band he would
symbolise the conquering hero; as an undertaker he would have reconciled
one to death. There was no technical trust which men would not have
reposed in him, so perfectly was he wrought as a human casket. As it
was, Festus Clasby filled the most fatal of all occupations to dignity
without losing his tremendous illusion of respectability. The hands
which cut the bacon and the tobacco, turned the taps over pint measures,
scooped bran and flour into scales, took herrings out of their barrels,
rolled up sugarsticks in shreds of paper for children, were hands whose
movements the eyes of no saucy customer dared follow with a gleam of
suspicion. Not once in a lifetime was that casket tarnished; the nearest
he ever went to it was when he bought up--very cheaply, as was his
custom--a broken man's insurance policy a day after the law made such a
practice illegal. There was no haggling at Festus Clasby's counter.
There was only conversation, agreeable conversation about things which
Festus Clasby did not sell, such as the weather, the diseases of
animals, the results of races, and the scandals of the Royal Families of
Europe. These conversations were not hurried or yet protracted. They
came to a happy ending at much the same moment as Festus Clasby made the
knot on the twine of your parcel. But to stand in the devotional lights
in front of his counter, wedged in between divisions and subdivisions of
his boxes and barrels, and to scent the good scents which exhaled from
his shelves, and to get served by Festus Clasby in person, was to feel
that you had been indeed served.

The small farmers and herds and the hardy little dark mountainy men had