356 



SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



gave me my cent's worth of candy. Following so many years 

 behind his wake in the voyage of life I note few changes. 

 When I see new comers in the neighborhood buying goods I 

 see the same hesitancy apparent on his countenance as to 

 whether he should urge goods on them in anticipation of 

 sure pay, or whether to hang back from so doing in appre- 

 hension of being eventually victimized. I see with what 

 alacrity the burly, well-to-do farmer — the man who, as he 

 drives the fat oxen of Shrewdness and Contentment, is fat 

 in both purse and figure — is waited on, till the counter is 

 full of packages of dry goods and groceries. I observe how 

 the poor ne'er-do-well, who is always asking to have his pur- 

 chases "just marked down," is avoided. I still hear " there 

 is nothing made in groceries," and still wonder how the 

 venders of them live. 



Then there were the boys who regularly graduated in 

 that store. From mere sweepers of the floor and dusters 

 of counters, from fishers of mackerel and drawers of 

 molasses and bungling Avrappers-up of packages, they have 

 become adepts in their business, and left the humble 

 scenes of their tutelage for positions in the city, or, having 

 capital at command, started stores of their own. They 

 were generally composed of lads who were too lazy to work 

 on a farm, and were the envy of their agricultural brethren. 

 Among us school boys a desire to 'tend store was rampant 

 within our souls. The duties of that vocation, in comparison 

 with our farm labors, loomed up so pleasantly before us that 

 it is no wonder we longed for a change of pasture on which 

 our young lives might feed. Often when engaged in the de- 

 tested occupation of stone picking, with the " spine of my back " 

 (query : is there any other spine?) bent double, and with legs 

 aweary with gathering our annual mural harvest, and my 

 system burning with spring fever, I have looked across the 

 fields toward the neighboring village and envied the new boy 



