“I expected a great deal of pleasure in shopping when I came to the city,” said she, “but it’s precious little I’m likely to have, for shopping without making bargains is but a dry business. We tried it yesterday and this morning, my daughters and me, and plague a thing could we find that was any thing to signify cheaper than in the stores at Tarry-town. I told the girls that I now believed what the man said in the newspapers, that people in the city all live by cheating one another. One would think that as they live at head-quarters, some of them could now and then pick up things for little or nothing and sell them at half-price, but it seems they are all leagued together to get whatever they can. We went from one end of a street to the other, and every place they had pretty much the same goods, and asked the same prices, unless it was here and there where they put up every thing monstrously high, just to come down little by little on being jewed, and then they never got lower than their next door neighbors. I was talking about it to one of the boarders at the hotel, old Mrs. Scrooge, a very sharp, sensible woman—some of you ladies know her, I dare say. She let me into a secret about shopping, that is well worth knowing. She says it is bad policy for people to go shopping with their best bib and tucker on, for if they look as if they are well off in the world, it’s a sure way to be taken advantage of, and that when she starts off among the stores, she always puts on a calico gown and a black straw bonnet which she keeps for that and for funerals.” “And does her plan work well?” asked one of the ladies, at length breaking in upon the monologue.