As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping was not
everyday trading. It was to mark the abandonment of an old
and the inauguration of a new line of policy. Thus it was
with no ordinary interest that I looked carefully at all the
shops, and when I found one that seemed to hold out a
possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed
the hint which I pricked into him with the point of my
parasol, and stopped outside. The one place in the world
where a man has no business to be is the inside of a dry-goods
shop. He never looks and never is so big and bungling as
there. A woman skips from silk to muslin, from muslin to
ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths, with the grace and
agility of a bird. She glides in and out among crowds of
her sex, steers sweepingly clear of all obstacles, and emerges
triumphant. A man enters, and immediately becomes all boots
and elbows. He needs as much room to turn round in as the
English iron-clad Warrior, and it takes him about as long.
He treads on all the flounces, runs against all the clerks,
knocks over all the children, and is generally underfoot.
If he gets an idea into his head, a Nims's battery cannot
dislodge it. You thought of buying a shawl; but a thousand
considerations, in the shape of raglans, cloaks, talmas, and
pea-jackets, induce you to modify your views. He stands by
you. He hears all your inquiries and all the clerk's
suggestions. The whole process of your reasoning is visible
to his naked eye. He sees the sack or visite or cape put
upon your shoulders and you walking off in it, and when you
are half-way home, he will mutter, in stupid amazement, "I
thought you were going to buy a shawl!" It is enough to
drive one wild.