I had met with
exquisite lace caps, and I did not that from the combined fineness and
strength of their material they might answer the purpose, even if in
form they should not be everything that was desirable,--and I
determined to ascertain, if possible, whether such things existed
anywhere out of poetry.

As you perceive, therefore, my Boston shopping was not everyday
trading. It was to mark the abandonment of an old and the inauguration
of a new line of policy. Thus it was with no ordinary interest that I
looked carefully at all the shops, and when I found one that seemed to
hold out a possibility of nightcaps, I went in. Halicarnassus obeyed
the hint which I pricked into him with the point of my parasol, and
stopped outside. The one place in the world where a man has no
business to be is the inside of a dry-goods shop. He never looks and
never is so big and bungling as there. A woman skips from silk to
muslin, from muslin to ribbons, from ribbons to table-cloths, with the
grace and agility of a bird. She glides in and out among crowds of her
sex, steers sweepingly clear of all obstacles, and emerges triumphant.
A man enters, and immediately becomes all boots and elbows. He needs
as much room to turn round in as the English iron-clad Warrior, and it
takes him about as long. He treads on all the flounces, runs against
all the clerks, knocks over all the children, and is generally
underfoot. If he gets an idea into his head, a Nims's battery cannot
dislodge it. You thought of buying a shawl; but a thousand
considerations, in the shape of raglans, cloaks, talmas, and
pea-jackets, induce you to modify your views. He stands by you. He
hears all your inquiries and all the clerk's suggestions. The whole
process of your reasoning is visible to his naked eye. He sees the
sack or visite or cape put upon your shoulders and you walking off in
it, and when you are half-way home, he will mutter, in stupid
amazement, "I thought you were going to buy a shawl!" It is enough to
drive one wild.

No! Halicarnassus is absurd and mulish in many things, but he knows I
will not be hampered with him when I am shopping, and he obeys the
smallest hint, and stops outside.

To be sure he puts my temper on the rack by standing with his hands in
his pockets, or by looking meek, or likely as not peering into the
shop-door after me with great staring eyes and parted lips; and this is
the most provoking of all. If there is anythin