"Cloths, cassinettes, cassimeres, velvet silks, satins, Marseilles waistcoating, fine, calf boots, seal and morocco pumps for gentlemen, crepe lisse, lace veils. Thibet shawls, fine prunella shoes."
"Reads like a foreign language to me," said Abe. "The pomp of the East has got here at last. I'd like to know what seal and morocco pumps are. I reckon they're a contrivance that goes down into a man's pocket and sucks it dry. I wonder what a cassinette is like, and a prunella shoe. How would you like a little Marseilles waistcoating?"
Suddenly a man touched his shoulder with a hearty "Howdy, Abe?"
It was Eli, "the wandering Jew," as he had been wont to call himself in the days when he carried a pack on the road through Peter's Bluff and Clary's Grove and New Salem to Beardstown and back.
"Dis is my store," said Eli.
"Your store!" Abe exclaimed.
"Ya, look at de sign."
The Jew pointed to his sign-board, some fifty feet long under the cornice, on which they read the legend:
"Eli Fredenberg's Emporium."
Abe looked him over from head to foot and exclaimed: