12 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
great store, certainly — in a small box over the way, 
behind the Molunkus sign-post. It looked like the 
balance-box of a patent hay-scales. As for his house, 
we could only conjecture where that was; he may have 
been a boarder in the Molunkus House. I saw him 
standing in his shop-door, — his shop was so small, that, 
if a traveller should make demonstrations of entering 
in, he would have to go out by the back way, and confer 
with his customer through a window, about his goods 
in the cellar, or, more probably, bespoken, and yet on 
the way. I should have gone in, for I felt a real im¬ 
pulse to trade, if I had not stopped to consider what 
would become of him. The day before, we had walked 
into a shop, over against an inn where we stopped, the 
puny beginning of trade, which would grow at last into 
a firm copartnership in the future town or city, — indeed, 
it was already “ Somebody & Co.,” I forget who. The 
woman came forward from the penetralia of the at¬ 
tached house, for “ Somebody & Co.” was in the burning, 
and she sold us percussion-caps, canales and smooth, 
and knew their prices and qualities, and which the hunt¬ 
ers preferred. Here was a little of everything in a 
small compass to satisfy the wants and the ambition of 
the woods, — a stock selected with what pains and care, 
and brought home in the wagon-box, or a corner of the 
Houlton team; but there seemed to me, as usual, a pre¬ 
ponderance of children’s toys, — dogs to bark, and cats to 
mew, and trumpets to blow, where natives there hardly 
are yet. As if a child, born into the Maine woods, among 
the pine-cones and cedar-berries, could not do without 
such a sugar-man, or skipping-jack, as the young Roths¬ 
child has. 
I think that there was not more than one house on 
