DULL TRADE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 281, 3 September 1889, Page 2

DULL TRADE.

The above heading seems absurd to nse in the Flaxopolis, but the cautious tradesman will always insist that trade is dull, whether he is busy or not. Of course opposition is not desireable. and in the drapery line Foxton has experienced some severe competition, so that every draper is prepared to make any number of affidavits, or take any other sort of fit, to prove the truth of his statement. We are frequently the victim, as a recipient of these tales of woe, and we have generally dismissed the tale as being all words, words, and nothing but words. However, this so exasperated one of the most obliging and genial of salesmen, that he determined to fix the matter more prominently in our mind. The other morning, as our local photographer, who had taken a view, had left his camera unattended in the Main-street, this artful man acquired it, which is the pleaaautest way we know of to describes the act, and with great glee and hurried steps took the instrument into the drapery emporium he was in charge of. We are not sure whether he had seen us coming down the road, but am afraid that he had. With indignation mantling our honest features, at suoh an act being perpetrated in broad daylight, and with the risk that the policeman might have seen it, we marched straight into the premises mentioned, und sternly demanded why had he taken the camera? We had looked for explanations and confusion on the culprit's part, but he smilingly replied that " he had borrowed it to photograph the fact that he had had a customer if one should come in !" And then wanted us to be taken as the, false representation of onel No. Oh no f '