"The English," said a celebrated Frenchman once unkindly, "are a nation of shopkeepers." However that may be, it is certain that we are nothing if not business-like. Evidently, the love of bargaining is inherent in the soul of the average British female who comes up from the suburbs for a day's shopping. She has a long, neatly-written list of her wants and necessities, generally pinned to some part of her person, a list with startling variations of subject, thus: "Baby's food-warmer, Tom's cricket-bat, lay-figure for Sylvia, beetle-trap for the kitchen, Effie's long Suède gloves, registry office for new cook, dentist, evening wrap, chiffon boa, something neat in the blouse line for Mamie, Aunt Maria's birthday." Poor woman! That "something neat in the blouse line" takes her nearly forty minutes in the finding; and "Aunt Maria's birthday" walks sadly into the hour for lunch, already attenuated. Several shops, alas! have been ransacked vainly, and the horrid "Sign 'ere, Miss!" that so cruelly stigmatizes, in certain cheap shops, the recalcitrant buyer, has more than once mortified the poor lady's sensitive ears. "Mamie," who is assisting at the martyrdom, gets quite cross over Aunt Maria; she succeeds, however, in detaching herself from her inconvenient parent, and appears, for her part, to be preferring the claims of a protégé of her own, a personage who is very particular, apparently, about his special brand of ties. Finally, Aunt Maria's natal day is checked off by the purchase of an aggressive china pug, large as life, with staring eyes, which, for some occult reason, is supposed to be "the very thing" for that lady. What are the special qualities that constitute "a good shopper"? They would appear to be as follows: endurance, patience, strength, coolness, self-control, amiability, mental arithmetic, and, lastly, an eye to a bargain. All these cardinal virtues are, for the average shopper, considered as generally necessary to salvation: but yet there are other qualifications. For instance, the intense delight that most women (and a few men) feel in obtaining an article at 1_s._ 11-3/4_d._, that has once been marked with the magic 3_s._ 6-1/2_d._, is of distinct value in this connection. How many women have delightedly bought a thing that is not of the slightest value to themselves or to any one else, simply because it is thus reduced in price! Hence the supreme advantage of sales--but that is another story.