Let the shop be decent and handsome, spacious as the place will allow,
and let something like the face of a master be always to be seen in it;
and, if possible, be always busy, and doing something in it, that may
look like being employed: this takes as much with the wiser observers of
such things, as any other appearance can do.

I have heard of a young apothecary, who setting up in a part of the
town, where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much whether he
should get into business, hired a man acquainted with such business, and
made him be every morning between five and six, and often late in the
evenings, working very hard at the great mortar; pounding and beating,
though he had nothing to do with it, but beating some very needless
thing, that all his neighbours might hear it, and find that he was in
full employ, being at work early and late, and that consequently he must
be a man of vast business, and have a great practice: and the thing was
well laid, and took accordingly; for the neighbours, believing he had
business, brought business to him; and the reputation of having a trade,
made a trade for him.

The observation is just: a show may bring some people to a shop, but it
is the fame of business that brings business; and nothing raises the
fame of a shop like its being a shop of good trade already; then people
go to it, because they think other people go to it, and because they
think there is good choice of goods; their gilding and painting may go a
little way, but it is the having a shop well filled with goods,[29]
having good choice to sell, and selling reasonable--these are the things
that bring a trade, and a trade thus brought will stand by you and last;
for fame of trade brings trade anywhere.