THE STORE. 
467 
the little community were supplied from the same establishment. 
Although circumstances have so much changed since those days, 
although the catalogue of necessaries and luxuries has been so 
much increased, yet the country store still preserves much of this 
character, and would seem to deserve a name of its own. It is 
neither a shop devoted to one limited branch of trade, nor a ware- 
house implying the same branch carried out on a greater scale, 
nor is it a bazaar where many different owners offer goods of va- 
rious kinds within the same walls. The store, in fact, has taken 
its peculiar character, as well as its name, from the condition of 
the country ; and th« word itself, in this application of it, might 
bear a much better defence than many others which have found 
their way into books. 
Now-a-days there are always, however, more than one store in 
every village. Indeed, you never find one of a trade standing 
long alone anywhere on Yankee ground. There is no such man 
in the country as the village doctor, the baker, the lawyer, tlie 
tailor ; they must all be marshalled in the plural number. We 
can understand that one doctor should need another to consult 
and disagree with ; and that one lawyer requires another with 
whom he may join issue in the case of Richard Roe vs. John Doe, 
but why there should always be two barbers in an American vil- 
lage, does not seem so clear, since the cut of the whiskers is an 
arbitrary matter in our day, whatever may be the uncertainties of 
science and law. Many trades, however, are carried on by threes 
and fours ; it strikes one as odd that in a little town of some 1400 
souls, there should be three jewellers and watchmakers. There 
are also some score of tailoresses — and both trade and word, in 
their feminine application, are said to be thoroughly American. 
