of the way, and business will not follow him that runs away from it:
suppose a ship-chandler should set up in Holborn, or a block-maker in
Whitecross Street, an anchor-smith at Moorgate, or a coachmaker in
Redriff, and the like!

It is true, we have seen a kind of fate attend the very streets and rows
where such trades have been gathered together; and a street, famous some
years ago, shall, in a few years after, be quite forsaken; as
Paternoster Row for mercers, St Paul's Churchyard for woollen-drapers;
both the Eastcheaps for butchers; and now you see hardly any of those
trades left in those places.

I mention it for this reason, and this makes it to my purpose in an
extraordinary manner, that whenever the principal shopkeepers remove
from such a street, or settled place, where the principal trade used to
be, the rest soon follow--knowing, that if the fame of the trade is not
there, the customers will not resort thither: and that a tradesman's
business is to follow wherever the trade leads. For a mercer to set up
now in Paternoster Row, or a woollen-draper in St Paul's Churchyard, the
one among the sempstresses, and the other among the chair-makers, would
be the same thing as for a country shopkeeper not to set up in or near
the market-place.[15]

The place, therefore, is to be prudently chosen by the retailer, when he
first begins his business, that he may put himself in the way of
business; and then, with God's blessing, and his own care, he may expect
his share of trade with his neighbours.

2. He must take an especial care to have his shop not so much crowded
with a large bulk of goods, as with a well-sorted and well-chosen