The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1905-03-22

way dL reg uLdE pIlCSS.
He knew a trick worth two of that.
He had a craze for the antique. Any
thing in that line-chipped and cracked
| china, V mind how Clipped and
cracked; rickety old furniture, never
mind how rickety; miscellaneous lots,
the more miscellaneous the better
these were his hobby. And some kind
of good luck or good judgment, or both
combined, stood always at his elbow,
invisibly guarding his interests.
These ugly, crooked, pock-marked
little men generally prosper, especially
| if they live on bread and salt butter, or
| bread and no butter, with an occa-
| sional herring and an ample supply OF
potatoes, with perhaps, at long inter
walls, a little bit of meat; wisely select
ed, ard bought on the political economy
principle.
And what finer spot in all the wide
world for living economically is there
| than Clare Market, where the cheap
ening process goes on increasingly the
| whole year through, from early in the
morning till late in the night, when the
| grease and tar lamps are naring in the
| wind?
Little Ma9e-Believe could nave told
you something about that.
She was intimately acquainted with
all the entanglements and tortuous
windings of Clare Market, and, young
as she was, had grown in the habit of
lingering by the side of pale-faced
women who stood before the butchers
| board striving to coax the man in the
blue flannel apron to take a halfpenny
a pound less, or at least to cut OF a
little of the superiuods fat with which
the meat was fringed-efforts which
were very rarely successful.
When Little Make-Believe witnessed
the conclusion Of such a bargain she
would run to some convenient window
sill, where with an imaginary knife
she would cut away all the imaginary
fat from an imaginary piece Of meat,
and hand it to an imaginary poor wom-
an, saying, with the air of a trade
who is doing a splendid stroke of bust
ness:
There! Will that suit yer at tup-
pence a pound? Never mind the money.
Pay me when yer likew G.. -..
At the end of thirty-three years you
might have multiplied by fourteen the
fourteen sovereigns Thomas Dexter
found in his fathers old-fashioued
nightcap, and have multiplied that
again by fourteen, and you would still
have fallen short of the extent Of his
riches.
Not that he had any idea how much
he was worth. That he had no dispo-
sition to count and gloat over his
money and possessions was a sufficient
proof that the grain of his nature was
not mercenary.
He was simply a mai engrossed IN
his business, and he attended to it
patiently and shrewdly until his shop
became crowded with the strangest
collection of odds and ends that were
ever gathered under one roof.
He took premises at the back OF his
shop, and almost before he could look
around they became crowded also. Old
armor, old brasses, old carvings, old
lace, old enamels, old furniture, filled
every nook and corner and when a
certain erratic taste for anything an
cient and hideous came into vogue it
was as good as a little fortune to him.
Prosperity did not change him in the
least. From a crooked, ugly, peck
marked young man, he grew into a
crooked, ugly, pock-marked middle
aged man, and further on into a
crooked, ugly, pock-marked old man.
Despising everything new, he eve
from the day he set up as his own
master wore a new coat, a new hat, or
a new pair of boots. Anything second
hand in the way of clothing suited him
if it was large enough, and as it was
not the slightest consequence if it were
many sizes too large, his appearance
generally was that of a clumsily done
up bundle.
As for the money he accumulated, he
kept it anywhere except in a bank-in
corners of his shop not accessible to
customers, under the flooring, in the
broken ceiling, in the walls, in old
fddles, in c%obwebbed crevices, tied up
in bits of cid calico and canvas and
| chamois leather bags.
Some of these packages looked like
diminutive legs of mutton; some like
fingers and thumbs with large bread
| poultices on them.
He had the greatest difficulty in
squeezing himself of a night into the
\ little room at the back Of his shop in
which he slept, so packed was it with
valuable oddments.
Suspended over his head, in the shape
Of a net, by means of pieces Of string
tied to the bare rafters of the ceiling,
was his fathers nightcap, the tassel, as
you looked up, being the first part of it
that met your eyes.
A man of imagination might have
conjured up the outlines of old Dexter's
ghost standing on his head in his night
cap in reversal of the laws of nature,
with his legs sticking upward through
the roof.
Into this niShtcap Thomas Dexter for
many years had. been in the habit of
throwing an odd piece of gold or silver
upon every occasion of his making a
good bargain, and it was now so heav-
lily weighted that, as he lay abed gaz-
ing at it, there was really a danger OF