Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 1 December 1894, Page 3

Notes and Events.

♦ The Pall Mall Gazette has, in a late number, an article on the Art of Shopping. For the thorough enjoyment of serious and earnest shopping three conditions are essential. The first, ready money ; secondly, she must not be pressed for time ; thirdly the weather must needs be seized in a pleasant mood, for shopwalkers worship appearance, and. the well-dressed customer commands double the attention and civility conceded to the frump. Much other advice is given, which we have no room for, but upon the delinquencies of the shop-assistant it would be easy to write, so the article says, volumes. "It is the ' male bird ' that chiefly offends. Be he never so nimble a jumper of counters, he is, without reservation, the most irritating being that disfigures the universe. He is maddeningly suave of manner ; he is utterly destitute of common sense ; and, if fate has made him a draper, it is generally his misfortune to be colour-blind. He always claims to know what you are in quest of better than you do yourself, and where his trade is concerned he is no 1 : upon speaking terms with Truth." This is rather too rough, bub still there appears much truth in the following : — " Ask his opinion on the comparative weight of two materials, and as likely as not he will say : "Ot the two, madam, one is equally as heavy as the other." Tell him you want a pocket-hand-kerchief, and ten to. one he will inform you that they are quite out of fashion, but that he has a " special line " in blouses which he is anxious to show you. Request him to match a bit of ribbon, and, if he is unsuccessful, he will shift his ground twenty times rather than confess himself beaten. His first step is to produce something of a colour six shades apart from your pattern, with the assurance that it is an excellent match ; if you insist you are not such a fool as you look, he will cast scorn upon your pattern by repeating his catch>word "out of fashion;" and if that does not cow you into submission, he will suggest that " a contrast would be more distinguished," and offer you a third time the article which he had originally declared to be " an excellent match."