esty, and pettifogging, to which Mr. Jones could
turn a deaf ear. But sometimes worse than this would ensue; ladies
would insist on their rights; scrambles would occur in order that
possession of the article might be obtained; the assistants in the
shop would not always take part with Mr. Jones; and, as has been
before said, serious difficulties would arise.

There can be no doubt that Jones was very wrong. He usually was
wrong. His ideas of trade were mean, limited, and altogether
inappropriate to business on a large scale. But, nevertheless, we
cannot pass on to the narration of a circumstance as it did occur,
without expressing our strong abhorrence of those ladies who are
desirous of purchasing cheap goods to the manifest injury of the
tradesmen from whom they buy them. The ticketing of goods at prices
below their value is not to our taste, but the purchasing of such
goods is less so. The lady who will take advantage of a tradesman,
that she may fill her house with linen, or cover her back with
finery, at his cost, and in a manner which her own means would
not fairly permit, is, in our estimation,--a robber. It is often
necessary that tradesmen should advertise tremendous sacrifices.
It is sometimes necessary that they should actually make such
sacrifices. Brown, Jones, and Robinson have during their career
been driven to such a necessity. They have smiled upon their female
customers, using their sweetest blandishments, while those female
customers have abstracted their goods at prices almost nominal.
Brown, Jones, and Robinson, in forcing such sales, have been coerced
by the necessary laws of trade; but while smiling with all their
blandishments, they have known that the ladies on whom they have
smiled have been--robbers.

Why is it that commercial honesty has so seldom charms for women? A
woman who would give away the last shawl from her back will insist on
smuggling her gloves through the Custom-house! Who can make a widow
understand that she should not communicate with her boy in the
colonies under the dishonest cover of a newspaper? Is not the passion
for cheap purchases altogether a female mania? And yet every cheap
purchase,--every purchase made at a rate so cheap as to deny the
vendor his fair profit is, in truth, a dishonesty;--a dishonesty to
which the purchaser is indirectly a party. Would that women could be
taught to hate bargains! How much less useless trash would there be
in our houses, and how muc