CHAPTER XIV.
BUSINESS.
The world is full of hopeful analogies, and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.
— George Eliot.
Business lines and methods were not definitely de- termined. You might buy butter in a hardware store and drygoods at a liquor shop.
When Purser Forbes, of the steamer California, set out to purchase stores, he ransacked the place, picking up here and there what he could find, paying usually a dollar a pound for provisions; whereupon, becoming somewhat disheartened, he dropped into a restaurant, where, for a mutton chop, with poor bread, and still poorer coffee, and no butter, he was made to pay $3 50. Thereupon he thought it must be a great country, and so went on with his purchases.
Business was conducted on high-pressure principles. On Long Wharf there was a candy shop, the owner of which, after six months' business failed for $100,000. So quickly after a fire was building begun, that a water bucket would have to be used before the new timbers were laid.
Since the days of the Medici, who ranked high among the class of Lombard money-changers, the in- sigfnia of the three o;olden balls, derived from their armorial bearings, hang over the entrance to the pawn- broker's shop.
Frenchmen were the first to raise the occupation of boot-blacking into an art. The cleaning, and damp- ening, and plastering, and polishing were not done by
