"It is well said," I admitted, hoping that he might yet learn wisdom
from my attitude of unruffled urbanity, though I feared that his angle
of negotiating was unconquerably opposed to mine, "but now its many
imperfections are revealed. The inelegance of its outline, the
grossness of the applied colours, the unlucky combination of numbers
engraved upon this plate, the--"
"Damme!" cried the utterly perverse rebel standing opposite, "why
don't you keep on your Compound, you Yellow Peril? Who asked you to
come into my shop to blackguard the things? Come now, who did?"
"Assuredly it is your place of commerce," I replied cheerfully,
preparing to bring forward an argument, which in our country never
fails to shake the most stubborn, "yet bend your eyes to the fact that
at no great distance away there stands another and a more alluring
stall of merchandise where--"
"Go to it then!" screamed the abandoned outcast, leaping over his
counter and shouting aloud in a frenzy of uncontrollable rage. "Clear
out, or I'll bend my feet--" but concluding at this point that some
private calumny from which he was doubtless suffering was disturbing
his mind to so great an extent that there was little likelihood of our
bringing the transaction to a profitable end, I left the shop
immediately but with befitting dignity.
With a fell-founded assurance that you will now be acquiring a really
precise and bird's-eye-like insight into practically all phases of
this country.
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