There you saw dealers in scraps of cloth of all colors, ages, shades, qualities, and fashion, to assimilate either with worn-out or ill-fitting garments. Some of the shops presented mountains of old shoes, some trodden down at heel, others twisted, torn, split, and in holes, presenting a mass of nameless, formless, colorless objects, among which were grimly visible some species of _fossil_ soles, about an inch thick, studded with thick nails, like a prison door, and hard as a horseshoe, the actual skeletons of shoes whose other component parts had long since been devoured by Time. Yet all this moldy, rusty, dried-up accumulation of decaying rubbish found a willing purchaser, an extensive body of _merchants_ trading in this particular line. There existed retailers of trimming, fringes, cords, ravelings of silk, cotton, or thread, during the destruction of curtains, etc., rendered unfit for use. Other industrious persons occupied themselves in the business of women's bonnets; these bonnets never came to their shop but in the bags of the retailer, after the most singular changes, the most extraordinary transformations, the most unheard-of discolorations. To prevent the merchandise taking up too much room in a shop usually of the size of a large box, they folded these bonnets in two, after which they smoothed them and pressed them down excessively tight--saving the salt, it is positively the same process as is used in the preservation of herrings: thus you may imagine how much, thanks to this method of stowage, may be contained in a space of four square feet.