certain form, and seating them in a high wooden box on yellow wheels.

And upon us, also. When the Easy Chair beholds the silken Misses
Spanker rolling by, superior, upon those yellow wheels, it is with
difficulty that it recalls the cheese and sausage from which all that
splendor springs. To-morrow it will be Mrs. O'Finnigan's grandchildren
who will look down from their yellow wheels at the peanut and apple
stands, and wonder how persons can be so vulgar as to buy candy in the
streets. It is a whim of Mrs. Grundy's, who is all whimsey. She will
not let us buy a piece of simple candy at the corner, but she will
allow us to drag a silk dress over the garbage of the pavement. 'Tis a
whimsical sovereign. But we are so carefully trained that it is not
easy to disobey her. If to prove your independence you should stop to
buy the candy, would the pleasure of asserting yourself balance the
unpleasant consciousness that you were wondered at and laughed at?

But the text was shops, and we have drifted into this episode because
Mrs. O'Finnigan sells peanut candy in her shop upon the sidewalk near
the site of Corporal Thompson's Broadway Cottage, in the midst of the
gay spectacle of a summer day. And within a stone's-toss of her stand
how many fine houses you will see, and how many other fascinating
shops! Our English ancestors were called a shopkeeping nation by
Napoleon; but it is his own Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who have the
true secret of shopkeeping. They make shops fascinating. They have
made shopkeeping a fine art. The other day the Easy Chair stepped into
a shop in Maiden Lane, prepared to spend a very pretty sum of money,
for a very proper purpose. But if it had invaded the shopkeeper's
house, which is his castle, or threatened his hat, which is his crown,
it could not have been received more coolly. The disdainful
indifference with which its question was answered was exquisitely