Who is the happy tradesman? Who is he?
I mean in this peculiarly horrible weather?
The chemist.
There is no happier tradesman than he. He stands all day long, and a large part of the night, among his bottles and boxes and jars and jarlets and pots and potlets and tabloids and capsules, selling remedies for colds and coughs and sore throats and rheumatism and neuralgia.
The colder it is the more he is on velvet, the chemist.
In America he is called a "druggist," but "chemist" is better, even though it confuses a mere peddler of ammoniated quinine with Sir William Ramsay and Sir William Crookes.
The old-fashioned spelling was "chymist," and there are still one or two shops in London where this spelling holds, but I think it's affectation.
Meanwhile the chemist (or chymist) is coining money.
Not even his lavish expenditure of clean white paper and red, red sealing wax, and the gas that burns always to melt that red, red sealing-wax, can make his profits look ridiculous.
Not even the constant loss of small articles from the counter, such as manicure sticks, and digestive tablets, and jujubes, and face cream and smokers' cachous, which never ought to be spread about there at all, because they are so easily conveyed by the dishonest customer into pocket or muff, can seriously upset the smiling side of the chemist's ledger.