“I expressed a polite wish that he might get his goods even sooner than ‘las’ summer,’ and walked to the Jew-dialect counter, over which I was nearly pulled by the Hebrew clerk. ‘You’re chust in time,’ he said. ‘Say, veepin’ Rachel! but I sell you a parkain. Some goots on’y been ust vun veek on der staich; unt so hellep me cracious! you look so like mein prudder Imre dat I let dem go’--here he lowered his voice to a whisper--‘I let dem go fer a qvarter uf a darler.’
“I resisted him, and hurried to the Yankee department. There was tall hustling going on there, and a perfect mob of buyers of all sorts and conditions of writers; and it took half a dozen men, women, and children, including three typical farmers, to wait on them; and they were selling it by the inch and by the carload. ‘Wall, I’m plumb tired. Wisht they’d let up so ’st I could git a snack er somep’n’ inside me,’ said one; and he looked so worn out that I passed on to the Irish counter. A twinkling-eyed young Irishman, not long over, in answer to my question, said: ‘Sure, there’s not much carl fer larrge quantities av ut. Jane Barlow do be havin’ a good dale, an’ the funny papers do be usin’ ut in smarl lots, but ’t is an aisy toime I have, an’ that’s a good thing, fer toimes is harrd.’
“I paused a moment at the English-dialect counter, and the rosy-cheeked clerk said: ‘Cawn’t I show you the very litest thing in Coster?’ I told him no, and he offered me Lancashire and Yorkshire at ‘gritely reduced rites’; but I was proof against his pleading, and having now visited all the departments but one, went to that.”
“What was it?” asked the writer for the magazines.
“Maybe not, but it sounds all right, all right. Well, whatever it is, the fellow in charge was a regular Ninth-Warder, and when I got abreast of him he hailed me with, ‘Soy, cully, wot sort d’ yer want? I got a chim-dandy Sunny-school line er samples fer use in dose joints, or I c’n gi’ yer hot stuff up ter de limit an’ beyon’. See? Here’s a lot of damaged “wot t’ ’ells” dat I’ll trun down fer a fiver, an’ no questions ast. Soy, burn me fer a dead farmer if I ever sol’ dem at dat figger before; but dey’s some dat Townsen’ did n’ use, an’ yet dey’s dead-sure winners wit’ de right gang. See?’