BUYING AND SHOPPING.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11502, 7 February 1903, Page 6

BUYING AND SHOPPING.

One has not needed, during the past few weeks in Ohristohurch, the assurances of the humourists that women delight in "sales." The windows, and apparently the interiors, of the drapers' shops have had all the attraction for the sex that a honeypot has for flies, or, shall we say, that blossoms have far butterflies, and there are, or will shortly be, other reminders for husbands and fathers that the semi-annual sales have been held. "Men buy things; women shop," wrote a cynic in discussing recently the question of "Bargain driving," and the difference between masculine and feminine methods of doing business in shops, thus epigrammatteally described, is never ' so marked as at a "sale." Such an occasion gives many women the only opening for bargoin-drivihg that the shopkeeper offers them or that their sense of propriety will allow them to indulge in. It is possible, we believe, to "pick up bargains," as the phrase goes, even when there ore no sp«wial sales going on, but this is a very,different thing to driving bargains, a practice scorned by the average Englishwoman and her colonial sister. But sale times, it is said, give proof that the feminine instinct for bargaining can spring into full work-pg order whenever cuetom sanctions it» use, and therein undoubtedly lies part of tha pleasure that "soles" afford

»ver keen at bargaining in Dt *' n ** l .'sw^^^^K.* s ' Incapable of doing w when jet into a shop. They are fteggf .jjffl • to "buy things," a* « nH» ' know what they want and how much fef'" ; qK' tre willing to pay, and busmeea is sooi4'-'il& " done under thee* conditions. A man, ever, shows to much less in a shop when he is acting mV*% *i the agsmt, often it must be confessed t__'S i unwilling agent, of has wife. Unices h* £ i has had the -wit to get a written sb-taatat '-% '} of what she wants, and the prices to be p_4d. '-§ \ he presents himse-f at the counter with but -*g f the vaguest ideas on these r portant points. His' head is full of \ of teci-nical terms of the drapery taid*£|| [ which convey no meaning to his oovimtiJM I senses. In most casts he feels like a foots! ' he almost invariably looks like one. n,sf|| \ bashful man, and ino_.t men wO painfully bashful -in the ladies' d*i|cl partment of a draper's shop, is either crushed vrith. a eenso ot lirllj appearance; or he otiemjpte to carry 08 situation with ca. aar of bravado , makes the -saleswoman suspect that he haf utS* been drinking. Confronted witW wild-ring variety of articles and mat*.-ssl rials he probably buy» tlhe wrong, and ually the most'expensive, one, thankful to i : £l escape aft ony price. He would as soon 1 *M ti-ink ot standing on his head on the ooun'-iS§ ter as of driving a bargain. Many » /I woman, bent, on the -ante ro-ssion, toiW ' V have enjoyed* herself tranendously, for.sht .it : would have "shopped" to her heart's oou> , tent, and between buying and ttopping ' * there is apparently much duTerence. *0&et» /■' are some .wameri," says the cynic wft have. quoted, '%(ho are perfectly content, to tun* ~ l $ "ashop almost inside out, an-1 to buy- I '}'' " nothing, or almost nothing, in the end. .j'il ' "They seem to take it for granted that "is the shopman's business to show thsaiV-fi j "practically everything allied in N "or design to the article which they ii-W "i "tend to buy, and that undoubtedly thtff J "are juebified in ordering a full-dress pai-dsl? f "of the contents of an entire set of drnmn'* -.' "containing silk ribbons when their fijetdT -: "purpose is to pay for a few yards of '1 1 "tape/ 1 To such women, and -we believf Ij I thej- are to be found in OliristchuK-v » \% elsewhere, the "sales" season, that period "i of license for the bargain-hunter, must 1m A a time of sheer enjoyment. They range. | from counter to counter, from department I to department, leaving disorder and despair '?■ < in their train. . That tho extent of their h purchase'bears no relation to the time titsy ? have spent counts as nothing. They h»va "shopped," wopldhaveiftsrely* ■£ "bought things." ,} t