Tinkey's shop was on the Circle. One side of Tinkey's window was a bakery with jelly-cakes and angel-food. This, as I recall, was my earliest theology. Heaven, certainly, was worth the effort. The other window unbent to peppermint sticks and grab-bags to catch our dirtier pennies. But this meaner produce was a concession to the trade, and the Tinkey fingers, from father down to youngest daughter, touched it with scorn. Mrs. Tinkey, in particular, who, we thought, was above her place, lifted a grab-bag at arm's length, and her nostrils quivered as if she held a dead mouse by the tail.
But in the essence Tinkey was a caterer and his handiwork was shown in the persons of a frosted bride and groom who waited before a sugar altar for the word that would make them man and wife. Her nose in time was bruised—a careless lifting of the glass by the youngest Miss Tinkey—but he, like a faithful suitor, stood to his youthful pledge.
Beyond the shop was a room with blazing red wall paper and a fiery carpet. In this hot furnace, out-rivaling the boasts of Abednego, the neighborhood perspired pleasantly on August nights, and ate ice-cream. If we arose to the price of a Tinkey layer-cake thick with chocolate, the night stood out in splendor above its fellows.
Around the corner was Conrad's bookstore. Conrad was a dumpy fellow with unending good humor and a fat, soft hand. He sometimes called lady customers, My dear, but it was only in his eagerness to press a sale. I do not recall that he was a scholar. If you asked to be shown the newest books, he might offer you the "Vicar of Wakefield" as a work just off the press, and tell you that Goldsmith was a man to watch. A young woman assistant read The Duchess between customers. In her fancy she eloped daily with a duke, but actually she kept company with a grocer's clerk. They ate sodas together at Tinkey's. How could he know, poor fellow, when their fingers met beneath the table, that he was but a substitute in her high romance? At the very moment, in her thoughts, she was off with the duke beneath the moon. Conrad had also an errand boy with a dirty face, who spent the day on a packing case at the rear of the shop, where he ate an endless succession of apples. An orchard went through him in the season.
Conrad's shop was only moderate in books, but it spread itself in fancy goods—crackers for the Fourth—marbles and tops in their season—and for Saint Valentine's Day a range of sentiment that distanced his competitors. A lover, though he sighed like furnace, found here mottoes for his passion. Also there were "comics"—base insulting valentines of suitable greeting from man to man. These were three for a nickel just as they came off the pile, but two for a nickel with selection.
At Christmas, Conrad displayed china inkstands. There was one of these which, although often near a sale, still stuck to the shelves year after year. The beauty of its device dwelt in a little negro who perched at the rear on a rustic fence that held the penholders. But suddenly, when choice was wavering in his favor, off he would pitch into the inkwell. At this mischance Conrad would regularly be astonished, and he would sell instead a china camel whose back was hollowed out for ink. Then he laved the negro for the twentieth time and set him back upon the fence, where he sat like an interrupted suicide with his dark eye again upon the pool.
Nor must I forget a line of Catholic saints. There was one jolly bit of crockery—Saint Patrick, I believe—that had lost an arm. This defect should have been considered a further mark of piety—a martyrdom unrecorded by the church—a special flagellation—but although the price in successive years sunk to thirty-nine and at last to the wholly ridiculous sum of twenty-three cents—less than one third the price of his unbroken but really inferior mates (Saint Aloysius and Saint Anthony)—yet he lingered on.
Nowhere was there a larger assortment of odd and unmatched letter paper. No box was full and many were soiled. If pink envelopes were needed, Conrad, unabashed, laid out a blue, or with his fat thumb he fumbled two boxes into one to complete the count. Initialed paper once had been the fashion—G for Gladys—and there was still a remnant of several letters toward the end of the alphabet. If one of these chanced to fit a customer, with what zest Conrad blew upon the box and slapped it! But until Xenophon and Xerxes shall come to buy, these final letters must rest unsold upon his shelves.
Conrad was a dear good fellow (Bless me! he is still alive—just as fat and bow-legged, with the same soft hand, just as friendly!) and when he retired at last from business the street lost half its mirth and humor.
Near Conrad's shop and the Circle was our house. By it a horse-car jangled, one way only, cityward, at intervals of twelve minutes. In winter there was straw on the floor. In front was a fare-box with sliding shelves down which the nickels rattled, or, if one's memory lagged, the thin driver rapped his whip-handle on the glass. He sat on a high stool which was padded to eke out nature.