The chief difficulty uncle Bryan had to contend with in keeping his stock properly assorted was brown sugar. Indeed, brown sugar may be said to have been the bane of his life; to me, it was a most hateful commodity, and I often wished there was not such an article in the world. Uncle Bryan had to pay ready money for sugar, and he could not purchase at the warehouse less than a bag at the time--about two hundredpounds weight, I believe. Sometimes he had not the money to go to the sugar market with, and the stock on the shelves had dwindled down almost to the last quarter of a pound. Then commenced a series of dreadful expeditions which I remember with comical terror. One of the first instructions given by uncle Bryan to my mother had been, never, under any pretext, to serve even the smallest quantity of sugar to a strange customer unless he or she purchased something else at the same time. The reason for this was that there was no profit on sugar; it was what was called a leading article in the trade, and by some mysterious trade machinations, arising probably out of the fever of competition, had come to be sold by the large grocers at exactly cost price. The small grocers, of course, were compelled to follow in the wake of the large ones; if they had not, their customers would have deserted them. Not only, indeed, did the small grocers make no profit on the sugar they sold, but, taking into consideration the draft necessary to turn the scale ever so little when weighing out quarter and half pounds, there was an absolute loss; even the paper in the scale would not make up for it, for it cost as much per pound as the sugar. Hence the necessity for not serving strangers with sugar by itself, and hence it was that I not unnaturally came to look upon it as a desperate crime for any stranger to attempt to purchase sugar over uncle Bryan's counter without asking at the same time for a proper quantity of tea or coffee, or some other article upon which there was a profit. My feelings, then, can be imagined when uncle Bryan (being short of sugar, and not having sufficient funds to purchase a bag at the warehouse), bidding me carry a fair-sized market basket, took me with him one dark night--and often afterwards on many other dark nights--to purchase brown sugar, and nothing else, in pounds, half pounds, and quarters. The plan of operation was as follows: uncle Bryan, selecting a likely-looking grocer's shop (an innocent-looking fly, he being the spider), would station me at some distance from it, bidding me wait until he returned. Then he would enter the shop boldly, and come out, with the air of one who resided in the neighbourhood, holding in his hand a quarter or half pound of feloniously-acquired moist. This he would deposit in the basket (which had a cover to it, to hide our villainy), and we would wander to another street, in which he pounced upon another grocer's shop, where the operation would be repeated. Thus we would wander, often for two