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apparel to cover our bodies than to make wooden nutmegs to tickle 

 our palates. Look at the glowing announcement (samples 

 banded round) setting forth "as a well-known fabric, being all wool 

 weft, and well woven, the shades dyed to suit the prevailing fashion 

 at the leading watering places, and being ingrain colours, they are 

 perfectly fast." A chief recommendation seemed to be they were 

 perfectly fast coloui'S ! Perhaps the vendor thought his goods 

 adapted to this watering place on that account ? They now had 

 cheap enough articles. But how good ? Paper made of the 

 meanest old worn out, washed out materials charged with kaoline 

 or pipe clay and sizing to give it weight. Newspapers for a half- 

 penny so rotten they would hardly hold together during one 

 reading and scarcely bear a short mail route. Trousers made of 

 shoddy and refuse jute yarns — "guaranteed all pure wool" for 13s. 

 Japanese silks, full length and width, twelve yards for 12s. 6d. 

 Silk-i'ep, " warranted all pure silk and wool," — only demi-rep, well 

 dyed shoddy and jute. Again — " Your attention is invited to our 

 warranted all pure silk stuffs at Is. 6d. per yard " — which was all 

 stuff! — puzzling both seller and buyer to show where the silk came 

 in ; and in weft, warp, or woof, in most of the very attractive fast- 

 coloured fashionable goods now filling the shop windows in every 

 lai-ge city or town in the kingdom or on the continent. He believed 

 the continentals had much to answer for ; the neighbouring streets 

 of Bowbells were filled with German and French manufacturers, 

 agents taking orders by samples, competing with the British 

 manufacturer — all making haste to be rich. A recent writer in a 

 popular journal of large circulation said: — 



" Indeed a plea for cheating has been put forward in a popular 

 print, to the effect that, cheat as much as we may, we do not 

 altogether succeed. Ton get up, it might be said, your fine glossy 

 linens, half lime, glaze, and cotton — you produce your showy prints 

 that before they ai-e washed look like fine silk, and after washing 

 like a worn out rag — and you think that you are ' doing ' the poor 

 Indian ryot who buys of you, because of the good name of the 

 British merchant. Pshaw ! No English matron who ever bored a 

 shopkeeper in choosing goods knows so much as the sly Indian 

 peasant who can tell the value of a yard of piece goods, even to a 

 strain of cotton in the warp or woof. The pleasant fact is that, in 

 attempting to cheat, we do not cheat, because our opponents are, 



