his philosophical interest in them to affect his commercial efficiency; he
drops them now and then a curt English phrase, or expressive Yankee idiom;
he knows very well when they mean to buy and when they do not; and they
equally wary and equally silent, unswayed by the glib allurements of a
salesman, judge of price and quality for themselves, make their solitary
offer, and stand or fall by it.

I am seldom able to conclude a pedestrian tour without a glance at the
wonderful interior of this cheap store, and I know all its contents
familiarly. I recognize wares that have now been on sale there for years;
I miss at first glance such accustomed objects as have been parted with
between my frequent visits, and hail with pleasure the additions to that
extraordinary variety. I can hardly, I suppose, expect the reader to
sympathize with the joy I felt the other night, in discovering among the
latter an adventurous and universally applicable sign-board advertising
This House and Lot for Sale, and, intertwined with the cast-off suspenders
which long garlanded a coffee-mill pendent from the roof, a newly added
second-hand india-rubber ear-trumpet. Here and there, however, I hope a
finer soul will relish, as I do, the poetry of thus buying and offering
for sale the very most recondite, as well as the commonest articles of
commerce, in the faith that one day the predestined purchaser will appear
and carry off the article appointed him from the beginning of time. This
faith is all the more touching, because the collector cannot expect to
live until the whole stock is disposed of, and because, in the order of
nature, much must at last fall to rein unbought, unless the reporter's
Devouring Element appears and gives a sudden tragical turn to the poem.

It is the whistle of a train drawing up at the neighboring station that
calls me away from the second-hand store; for I never find myself able to
resist the hackneyed prodigy of such an arrival. It cannot cease to be