Litchfield enquirer., 1877-03-08
MY cREAr.AuMr's WILL.

lam clerk in a country store, and sometimes wish I'd been O martyr in those days when they stretched people on gridiron Then I could have taken little ccmfort'in in life.
 This is the way of it: I am behind the counter on the side where we keep prints, CTS, and there trots up to the opposite side, where we keep fannels, customer neither ::young nor beautiful; I hurry around across, she asks for calicoes; then turn her about and make my way back, and pull down half a dozen pieces, but she just gazes at the shelves, says she would like to look at the under piece on the top shelf; climb up, at the risk of breaking my neck, and get the under piece out, and she concludes 'tisnt what like to look at ''that stripe;" I blunder on to every other stripe before I get her particular stripe, Then she says she wants little figure and get all the lit- tie figures out for her. She wants to know how much 'tls yard; say six cents, and she says she can get better in Springfield for five cents, and she looks at me suspiciously, as if was cheating youth. She wants to know if it'll wash, and say presume so, most calico does wash, and she looks at me indignantly, as if I were saucy youth, Then she asks if we take eggs, aud I say we do, and we pay twenty eight cents, and she says they're paying thirty at the other store; and off she goes, and put up the prints, and am down at the farther end of the store turning fragments out of a cracker barrel, when back she comes and wants samples. -f
 We keep the post-ofice, and by the time get back to my cracker barrel, in comes man who wants to know if he hasn't letter. He never had letter in his life, and he knows it, and I know it, but it is one of those facts that both par ties ignore, and give him the consoling assurance that he hasn't any and he de- parts Tn peace of mlnd. ......-
 Then there is a lady who wants to match confounded bit of silk braid. drab bordering on the lilac. It takes me five minutes to find one box of silk braid. and five more to find the drab bordering on the lilac. Then she wants sewing silk the same shade, and hunt through tlie sewing silks, and there's drab bordering on everything else under the sunsexcept- ing lilac; but I knows by the way her hounoes sweep out that a mercantile house not keeping drab bordering on the lilac stands. very low ~ .tr
 Iget down to the farther end of the store again, and there comes a man. to the front door and yelps out lond enough for every customer to hear that he's brought back that barrel of flour; says the bread was black and all dough in the middle. Now that man understood. when he had that flour, that it was an inferior quality not recommended, and he had 1t cheap. and took it because it was cheap: help him roll the flour in, and can see that he thinks he has circumvented villain.
 That's the way 1t goes day after day, week after week, and I hate tea, detest saleratus, abhor codfsh, and wish calico, cotton cloth, drilling, hooks and eyes, and all the wretched necessities of an artificial civilization were at the bottom of the Indian Ocean: long to be a. saw age more than I do to be an angel, and I shall be one of these days. though do wear cloth suits, and have a shaving mug at the bar. ber's marked in gilt letters. s. O. Haynea. wonder that all self-respect and senti. ment of humanity hasn't long perished from out my bosom. f 'as3- i1 5ae
 Such were my rehectionsons fine mofn- ing just after train time, while I was weighing out half a pound of black tea. when my fellow sufferer in the dry-goods and grocery infictlon called out, Rd '"u
 Here's a lady inquiring for yOu," Sam" .,.......
 In distinct outline before the. door stood little woman, her skirts spread out by triangular hoop like the skirts of the female figures we used to draw on our slates at school. I came to make my bow, and saw that she had deposited brown willow basket on the show case and dropped black glazed bag at her side, She wore stringy kind of shawl. with fearfully long fringe, and seemed to be afflicted with numb palsy. "Are you my nephew Sam'welF' asked she.
 My name is Samuel Haynes, ma'am.''
 T am your fathers aunt, Loueezer Haynes" She looked af me sharply, as if 1 was making fun her 1 suppose is b because the corners of my mouth turn mp, people are always suspectfng me ot ma- king fun of them. I wish those corners would sink and wonder they don't. si eit Fs
 ':I'm your only living female relative on your fathers side," said she. -,-.
 My business experience with females has been so imbittering, I was glad to learn she was the only one op my father'sf
 ''As you've no mother, feel it my dn-o ty to help make home for you.
 Instantly remembered that Aunt Lou isa was worth seventy-hve thousand. think I learned that in early years at-l the parental knee, along with who made me, and what State lived in. | know it always stood to my infantile con sciousness in the relation of a primary truth My father, all his life conrted poverty through the medium of dry goods and groceries, and went through bankruptcy as often as the law would allow. During the periodic seasons. be- fore calling the creditors and making an assignment, he used to clasp his hands
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