WHAT IS A GROCER, PAPA "What is a grocer, papa ?" "What is a grocer, cUd? Why he is a good natured man who deals in the actual necessities of life at the corner and is too humble to believe for a minute that he has any rights. He solicits trade by marking all his goods down to cost, and when the consumer don't pay promptly, he waits. Yes my child, some grocers stand and wait until the undertaker gets his bill in, and then they lean over the graveyard fence and won der how to get their money. Yes, the grocer has heard that story about the little worm of which your mother tells you, and he gets up aherid of the w and ahead of the birds, and often has to wake the watchman who is leaning against his front door before he can open it But then, my child, if he does open early he shuts very Inc' to make up for it. Yes, he is the man that lives by selling sugar, an I he makes so mach money on it that he is expected to give lumps of it to all the children, and to give their mothers a good heavy turn of the scale when he weighs it out. A grocer is sometimes called a cutter, but it is not because he cuts meats, my dear, it's because he cuts prices. If you cut a quarter of an inch off your nose every morning you'll BOOLI, reach your face, and that's what's the motto!' with the grocer, my child. He makes a clear
fortune on sugar, but before he goes to bed he plays a game of cards in which they 'cut,' and he loses all his money. Does he gamble, my child ? Oh, no, but he does something very much like it. He takes the public for fools, and first they cut, then he cuts he deals, they always win, and he—loses his money. It does sound like gambling, my chill, and some of the man from whom he buys his stock think it is worse. Oh, yes, the grocer is a pions man, he rarely swears excect when he sells eighteen pounds of raisins out of a twenty•five pound box and finds it empty, or when he weighs out a barrel of granulated sugar and it lacks just six pounds, or when a barrel of coal oil guages three gallons short, or when he hears Mrs. Never-pay say 'charge it,' or when the summer is so hot that he loses a dozen good cheese, or when the winter is so cold that his potatoes freeze, OR when one of his cus tomers say we buy our teas at a wholesale house on Front St., OR when the Sealer of Weights and Measures takes charge of his store and declares martial law, OR—but your mother is calling you, good-night child, I'll tell you the rest about the grocer some other time."