The Shopman - Page 2

a breathing space. But
why do they keep on with this cross-examination? If I knew exactly what
I wanted--description, price, size--I should not go to a shop at all, it
would save me such a lot of trouble just to send a cheque to the Stores.
The only reason why I go into a tradesman's shop is because I don't know
what I want exactly, am in doubt about the name or the size, or the
price, or the fashion, and want a specialist to help me. The only reason
for having shopmen instead of automatic machines is that one requires
help in buying things. When I want gloves, the shopman ought to
understand his business sufficiently well to know better than I do what
particular kind of gloves I ought to be wearing, and what is a fair
price for them. I don't see why I should teach him what is in fashion
and what is not. A doctor does not ask you what kind of operation you
want and what price you will pay for it. But I really believe these
outfitter people would let me run about London wearing white cotton
gloves and a plaid comforter without lifting a finger to prevent me.

And, by the bye, that reminds me of a scandalous trick these salesmen
will play you. Sometimes they have not the thing you want, and then they
make you buy other things. I happen to have, through no fault of my own,
a very small head, and consequently for one long summer I wore a little
boy's straw hat about London with the colours of a Paddington Board
School, simply because a rascal outfitter hadn't my size in a proper
kind of headgear, and induced me to buy the thing by specious
representations. He must have known perfectly well it was not what I
ought to wear. It seems never to enter into a shopman's code of honour
that he ought to do his best for his customer. Since that, however, I
have noticed lots of people about who have struck me in a new light as
triumphs of the salesman, masterpieces in the art of incongruity; age in
the garb of youth, corpulence put off with the size called "slender
men's"; unhappy, gentle, quiet men with ties like oriflammes, breasts
like a kingfisher's, and cataclysmal trouser patterns. Even so, if the
shopkeeper had his will, should we all be. Those poor withered maiden
ladies, too, who fill us with a kind of horror, with their juvenile
curls, their girlish crudity of colouring, their bonnets, giddy,
tottering, hectic. It overcomes me with remorse to think that I myself
have accused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hear
the thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they are
simply short-sighted trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesman
and saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even.... And
somewhere in the world a draper goes unhung.

However,