“I told him I did not care to buy, and passed on to the French-Canadian department. The clerk was just going out to lunch; but although I told him I merely wished to look, and not to buy, he said politely: ‘I try hall I can for get di’lect, but hup in Mon’réal dat McLennan he use hall dere is; but bymby I speak for some dat a frien’ have, an’ he sen’ me some. An’ ’e tell me I’ll get hit las’ summer.’
“I expressed a polite wish that he might get his goods even sooner than ‘las’ summer,’ and walked to the Jew-dialect counter, over which I was nearly pulled by the Hebrew clerk. ‘You’re chust in time,’ he said. ‘Say, veepin’ Rachel! but I sell you a parkain. Some goots on’y been ust vun veek on der staich; unt so hellep me cracious! you look so like mein prudder Imre dat I let dem go’—here he lowered his voice to a whisper—‘I let dem go fer a qvarter uf a darler.’
“I resisted him, and hurried to the Yankee department. There was tall hustling going on there, and a perfect mob of buyers of all sorts and conditions of writers; and it took half a dozen men, women, and children, including three typical farmers, to wait on them; and they were selling it by the inch and by the carload. ‘Wall, I’m plumb tired. Wisht they’d let up so ’st I could git a snack er somep’n’ inside me,’ said one; and he looked so worn out that I passed on to the Irish counter. A twinkling-eyed young Irishman, not long over, in answer to my question, said: ‘Sure, there’s not much carl fer larrge quantities av ut. Jane Barlow do be havin’ a good dale, an’ the funny papers do be usin’ ut in smarl lots, but ’t is an aisy toime I have, an’ that’s a good thing, fer toimes is harrd.’
“I paused a moment at the English-dialect counter, and the rosy-cheeked clerk said: ‘Cawn’t I show you the very litest thing in Coster?’ I told him no, and he offered me Lancashire and Yorkshire at ‘gritely reduced rites’; but I was proof against his pleading, and having now visited all the departments but one, went to that.”
“What was it?” asked the writer for the magazines.
“The tough-dialect counter.”
“Tough is not a dialect,” said he.
“Maybe not, but it sounds all right, all right. Well, whatever it is, the fellow in charge was a regular Ninth-Warder, and when I got abreast of him he hailed me with, ‘Soy, cully, wot sort d’ yer want? I got a chim-dandy Sunny-school line er samples fer use in dose joints, or I c’n gi’ yer hot stuff up ter de limit an’ beyon’. See? Here’s a lot of damaged “wot t’ ’ells” dat I’ll trun down fer a fiver, an’ no questions ast. Soy, burn me fer a dead farmer if I ever sol’ dem at dat figger before; but dey’s some dat Townsen’ did n’ use, an’ yet dey’s dead-sure winners wit’ de right gang. See?’