quantity proper for his business, and to give credit to his beginning.
In order to this, his buying part requires not only a good judgment in
the wares he is to deal in, but a perfect government of his judgment by
his understanding to suit and sort his quantities and proportions, as
well to his shop as to the particular place where his shop is situated;
for example, a particular trade is not only proper for such or such a
part of the town, but a particular assortment of goods, even in the same
way, suits one part of the town, or one town and not another; as he that
sets up in the Strand, or near the Exchange, is likely to sell more rich
silks, more fine Hollands, more fine broad-cloths, more fine toys and
trinkets, than one of the same trade setting up in the skirts of the
town, or at Ratcliff, or Wapping, or Redriff; and he that sets up in the
capital city of a county, than he that is placed in a private
market-town, in the same county; and he that is placed in a market-town,
than he that is placed in a country village. A tradesman in a seaport
town sorts himself different from one of the same trade in an inland
town, though larger and more populous; and this the tradesman must weigh
very maturely before he lays out his stock.

Sometimes it happens a tradesman serves his apprenticeship in one town,
and sets up in another; and sometimes circumstances altering, he removes
from one town to another; the change is very important to him, for the
goods, which he is to sell in the town he removes to, are sometimes so
different from the sorts of goods which he sold in the place he removed
from, though in the same way of trade, that he is at a great loss both
in changing his hand, and in the judgment of buying. This made me
insist, in a former chapter, that a tradesman should take all occasions
to extend his knowledge in every kind of goods, that which way soever he
may turn his hand, he may have judgment in every thing.