CHAPTER XXVIII 



PEDDLING IN THE UNITED STATES 



THE word peddler is one of those which Yankees misuse 

 and abuse. It is applied to any person who hawks goods 

 in any way or form, and not restricted to a travelling 

 foot-trader, as it should be. A Yankee talks of peddler 

 and peddling, where an Englishman would say a hawker, 

 and hawking. The word peddling is but little used in 

 England, while hawking is rarely spoken of in the States. 

 The peddler in both countries is rapidly dying out. 

 Railways and quick transition have made it no longer 

 profitable for a man to wander from place to place with 

 a small quantity of goods. The prairie schooner, how- 

 ever, is not yet a thing of the past, and will not be for 

 years to coine, though the expense of running one is 

 great. A prairie schooner is a waggon furnished with all 

 sorts of stores likely to be required in outlying stations 

 and farms, such as medicines, tea, coffee, sugar, medica- 

 ments for marking sheep, cattle washes, and unguents, 

 tin and iron ware, cutlery, gunpowder and shot, cartridges, 

 firearms, all sorts of drapery and wearing apparel, pins, 

 needles, threads, &c., &c., in a word, any and everything 

 that there is a demand for in a household. But the 

 articles which I have purposely enumerated were those 

 that I had the greatest call for, and therefore those that 

 formed the bulk of my stock. The stock of a prairie 

 schooner is always spoken of as " a cargo of notions," 

 because most traders carry, on speculation, a large number 

 of articles of doubtful utility, on the chance of doing a 

 brisk trade at a large profit, a chance that seldom failed. 



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