that? How would you get through it all, with a family of four, and
only one razor? The next place we called at was what my friend
described, in words that sounded to me, somehow, like melancholy
irony,--as "a poor provision shop." It was, indeed, a poor shop for
provender. In the window, it is true, there were four or five empty
glasses, where children's spice had once been. There was a little
deal shelf here and there; but there were neither sand, salt,
whitening, nor pipes. There was not the ghost of a farthing candle,
nor a herring, nor a marble, nor a match, nor of any other thing,
sour or sweet, eatable or saleable for other uses, except one small
mug full of buttermilk up in a corner--the last relic of a departed
trade, like the "one rose of the wilderness, left on its stalk to
mark where a garden has been." But I will say more about this in the
next chapter.



CHAPTER VI.



Returning to the little shop mentioned in my last--the "little
provision shop," where there was nothing left to eat--nothing,
indeed, of any kind, except one mug of buttermilk, and a miserable
remnant of little empty things, which nobody would buy; four or five
glass bottles in the window, two or three poor deal shelves, and a
doleful little counter, rudely put together, and looking as if it
felt, now, that there was nothing in the world left for it but to
become chips at no distant date. Everything in the place had a sad,
subdued look, and seemed conscious of having come down in the world,