Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1875 — City “Shoppers.” [ARTICLE]

City “Shoppers.”

Every one connected with a dry-goods establishment knows them. _ They come sailing into a store with an air "well calculated to convey the impression that their resources are unlimited amT that the purchases tliey make will require a special conveyance for delivery. It is only the unpracticed eye, however, which is deceived by them. The advent of one of them is a source of misery to the clerk un. fortunate enough to be singled out as a victim. He knows that the department over which he presides will in a few moments be a scene of confusion; that article after article will have to be displayed, examined andcommented upon; that he will have to submit to an ordeal of cross-ex-amination equal to any inflicted upon a prisoner at the bar of justice, and that he is debarred the privilege of which prisoners often avail themselves of making sharp or pertinent retorts. He must be all smiles and attention to a woman whom he intuitively knows—if he has not learned the fact from dear experiencehad not the remotest idea when she honored the store with a visit of making a purchase more extensive than a paper of pins, or who, perchance, may have made the matching of an almost unattainable shade of antique goods the pretext for an examination of an innumerable variety of articles. These “shoppers,” as they are called, apparently delight in producing disorder. For them the regular “opening day’’ has no particular attractions. Employers and clerks are then fully prepared to receive them, aud would only be too happy to spread out the novelties of the season for their inspection. But they prefer to wait until the customary rush is over—until everything is again in its place, and the admirable system which prevails in a well ordered dry goods store has again been established. *” Then they come out. and have, as it were, an opening day all to themselves, while the poor clerk* behind the counter suffers martyrdom. “Will it wash?” they ask of this piece of goods ; “will this hold its color?” of anotner; and so on through a labyrinth of questions, paying no heed whatever to the answers, though they would be greatly incensed were they not treated with all deference and prompt replies made to their inquiries. When they have fully satisfied their curiosity—if their propensity for overhauling can be so denominated—they sail out of the establishment as if they had done some node action, and as if tliey had placed everyone, from proprietor to call-boy, under everlasting obligations. As likely as not they leave one store to enter a* rival house, where they go through the same operation, using the knowledge they acquired at the first establishment cited for the purpose at the second of “ cheapening” fabrics which they really have no desire ()f possessing. It is related of a woman who had acquired some slight notoriety for her achievements as a “ shopper” that, having made some purchases in one establishment, she immediately bent her steps to a neighboring one. Here she journeyed from one counter to another, each one she left being littered in promiscuous heaps after her, until finally she had made a complete tour. Then turning to the clerk who had last waited upon her she condescended to explain: “ I bought some tilings at Blank & Blank’s, you know, and I thought I would just run in here and see if I had been cheated.” And there that woman had spent the stood part of an afternoon pawing over and pulling at dry goods of every conceivable kind, consuming as much time as twenty customers would have done, putting everybody to as much trouble as she possibly could, and all for the purpose of seeing: if she had been cheated in some trivial purchase at another place. It is no wonder that the “ shopper” is recognized by the clerk as a veritable nuisance; but she has her uses for all that. Ifßhe is not a source of profit to the merchaij|, she at least takes especial pains to give his employes opportunities for the exercise of patience and courtesy; and for fb£cultivation of these qualities on the part of dry-goods salesmen she is largely responsible. —Detroit Free Free*. —lt happens, after all, that Prof. Tice’s forecast of the weather was quite correct, except, perhaps, that it was a little too forecast. This Galveston gale has beerf* identified as the one he promised to bring on in the latter part of August. It isltd cut across the Gulf States, then fly up the Atlantic coast, and finally shoot across the Atlantic from some point about the mouth of the SL Lawrence.