THE SHOPMAN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10566, 28 January 1895, Page 6

THE SHOPMAN.

(Pall Hall Gazette.) If I were really opulent, I wou.o not go into a shop at all—l would have a private secretary. As it is, I find buying: things in a shop the moat exasperating of all the many trying duties of life. I am sometimes almost tempted _to declare myself Adamite to escape it. The way the shopman eyes you as you enter his den, the very spread of his fingers irritate me. “ What can I have the pleasure ?” ho says, bowing forward at me, and with his eye on my chin—and so waits. Now I hate incomplete sentences, and confound his pleasure! I don’t go into a shop to give a shopman pleasure. But your ordinary shopman must needs pretend you delight and amuse him. _ I ssy, trying to display my dislike as plainly as possible, “Gloves.” “Gloves. Yessir,” hoeays. Why should lie? I suppose he thinks I require to be confirmed in my persuasion that I want gloves. "Calf—-kid—-dogskin ? ” How should I know the technicalities of his traffic? “Ordinary gloves,” I say. disdaining his petty distinctions. “About what price, sir?” ha Now that always maddens me. Why should I be expected to know the price of gloves? I’m not a commercial traveller nor a wholesale dealer, and I don t look like one. Neither am I constitutionally parsimonious nor petty. I am a literary man, unworldly, and I wear long hair and i a soft hat and a peculiar overcoat to indicate the same to ordinary people. Why, I say, should I know the price of gloves ? I know they are some ordinary price, 11-jd, or 3s 6d, or 7a 6d, or something—one of those prices that everything is sold at—but further I don’t go. Perhaps I say 11-Jd at a venture. His face lights up with quiet malice. “Don’t keep them, sir,” he says. I can tell by his expression that I am ridiculously low, and so being snubbed. I think of trying with 3s fid, or 7s fid; the only other probable prices for things that I know, except £1 Is and J 25. Then ! see the absurdity of the business, and my anger comes surging up. “Look hero!” I say, aa bitterly as possible. “I don’t come here to play at Guessing Games. Never mind your prices. I went some gloves. Get mo some ! ” This cows him a little, but very little. “ May I ask your size, sir! ” lie says a trifle more respectfully. One would think I spent all my time remembering the size of my gloves. Howover, it is no good resenting it. “ It’s either seven or nine,” I say in a tired way. He just begins another question, and then he catches my eye and stops, and goes away to obtain soma gloves, and Lget a breathing space. But, why do they keep on with this cross-examination? If I knew exactly' what I wanted, description, price, s'zo, I should not go to a shop at all, it would save me such a Jot of trouble just to send a cheque to the stores. The only reason why I go into a tradesman’s shop, lis because I don’t know what I want exactly, am m doubt about the name, or the size, or the price, cr the fashion, and want a specialist to help me. "Tho only reason for having shopmen instead of automatic machines is that one requires belpin buying things. When I want gloves, the shopman ought to understand hia business sufficiantly well to know better than Ido whet particular kind of gloves I ought to be wearing, and what is a fair price for them. I don’t sea why I should teach him what is in fashion and what is not. A doctor does not ask you what kind of operation you want, and what price you will pay for it. But I really believe these outfitter people would lot me run about London wearing white cotton gloves and a plaid comforter without lifting a finger to prevent me. And, by-the-by, that reminds me of a scandalous trick these salesmen will play you. Sometimes they have not the thing you want, and then they make you buy other things. I happen to have, through no fault of my own, a very small head, and consequently all last cummer I wore a little boy’s straw hat about .London .with the colours of a Paddington Board school, simply because a mao hadn’t my size in *r proper kind of headgear, and induced me to buy the thing by specious representations. He must have known perfectly well it was not what I ought to wear. It seems never to enter into a shopman’s code of honour that he ought to do his best for his customer. Since that, however, I have noticed lots of people about who have struck mo in a, new light as triumphs of the salesman, masterpieces in the art of incongruity; ago in.the garb of youth, corpulence put off with the size called “slender men’s;” unhappy, gentle, quiet men, wilh ties like orifiamtr.es, breasts like a kingfisher’s, and cataciysinal trousers patterns. Even ec, if the shopkeeper bid hia will, should we all be. Those poor withered maiden ladies, too, who fill us with a kind of honor, with their juvenile curls, their girinh crudity of colouring, their bounds, giddy, tottering, hectic. It overcomes me tvith remorse to think that I myself haons hocused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hear the thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they are simply short-sighted, trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesman and saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even. * * * And somewhere in the world a draper goes unhung. However, the gloves are brought. I select a pair haphazard, and he pretends to perceive ; they fit .perfectly by patting them over the back;-bf my hand.’ I make him assure ■rue ! cf -' the'fit; and then buy the pair, and proceed to’ take my old ones off and put ! the ney on grimly.' Ifth'ey split or the fingers are '-too ’ long—glovaxoakera have the most erratic conceptions of the human-finger—l have to buy another pair. ’■■■'■ ■" V But the trouble only begins when.you have bo'ught your thing. “ Nothing more,' sir?” ho says. “Nothing,” I say. “Braces?” he saysl “No, thank yon,” I say. “'Collars,'cuffs'?” He looks at mine wiftly but keenly, and'with' aa ; unendurable suspicion. ■ • 1 • He goes on, item after-item, "Amlin rags, that I should endure this thing? And I get sick of ■ my everlasting “ No, thank you’’—the monotony'shows up so glaringly against his kaleidoscope variety. I feel all the unutterable pettiness, the mean want of enterprise of my poor little purchase compared with the catholic fling he suggests. I feel angry withmysolf for being thus ployed upon, furiously angry with him. “ No, no !” I eay. ■ “ These tie holders ate new.” He proceeds to show me his infernal tie holders. “They prevent the tie puckering,” ho says, with his eyo on mine. • It’s no good. “ How much ?” I say.

This whets him to farther outrage. “ Loot here, my man! ” I say at last, goaded to it, “I came here for gloves. After endless difficulties I at last induced you to let me have gloves. I have also been intimidated by the moat shameful hints and insinuations into buying that beastly tie holder. I’m not a child that I don’t know my own needs. Now, will you lot mo go ? How much do you want ? ” That usually checks him.

The above is a fair specimen of a shopman—a favourable rendering. There are other things they do, but I simply cannot write about them because it irritates tneao to think of them. One infuriating manccuvre ia to correct your pronounciation. Another is to mate a terrible ado about your name and address—even when it ia quite a well-known name. After I have bought things at a shop I am quite unlit for social intercourse. I have to go home and fume. Some day these shopmen will goad me too far. It’s almost my only consolation, indeed, to thiuk what I am going to do when Ido break out. There ia a salesman somewhere in the world, ho going on his way and I on mine, who will, I know, prove my last s'.raw., It may be he will read this—amused — rocking little of the mysteries of fate. * * * Is killing & salesman murder?

1 think hot. Doubtless legal formalities would ensue, but— ■* Mr Korea,” the magistrate would any, “you have performed a, courageous and public-spirited action. If more gentlemen would come forward as