Genius for Business.
It's a highly prized faculty in shop-keeping to sell something when a customer comes in, if you can. A female relative of ours went into a Hanover street fancy store 'tother day, to "look over" some ivory card and needle cases; the slightly agricultural-looking clerk "flew around," and when the question "Have you any ivory card cases?" was propounded, he responded—
"Not any, mum;" glancing into the show-case, his visual orbs lit upon a profusion of well-known matters in domestic economy, for the abrogation of certain parasitic insects.
"Haven't any card cases, mum,—got some elegant ivory small-tooth combs!"
Have You Got Any Old Boots?
No slight portion of the ills that flesh is heir to, in a city life, is the culinary item of rent day. Washing day has had its day—machines and fluid have made washing a matter of science and ease, and we are no longer bearded by fuming and uncouth women in the sulks and suds, as of yore, on the day set apart for renovating soiled dimities and dickeys. Another and more important matter, from the extent of its obnoxiousness to our nerves and temper, has come home to our very threshold and hearths, to disturb the even tenor of our domestic quietude and peace.
"Have you got any ole boots?"
Boston lost a good citizen by those bell-pulling, gate-whacking, back-door-pounding infernal collectors of time and care-worn boots. The old boot gatherers were almost as diverting as novel to me, when I first located in Boston; but I have long since learned to hate and abhor them, and their co-laborers in the tin-pan, tape, tea-pot, willow work, and white pine ware trade, with a most religious enthusiasm.
"Have you got any ole boots?"