In some shops, confessors cluster like grapes over a vintner’s door. They block up the way of custom; and it is evident, in many cases, that the devotee would rather lose the chance of a penny from a customer, by omitting opportunities of attack, temptation, and inveiglement, than lose the joke that is passing in the merry circle of his confessors, which his ear drinks in as a precious _aside_, while he only can spare a mere fragment of his attention—a corner of one auditory organ—the front shop of his mind—to the real business before him. In some shops, confessors get no encouragement before dinner. The broad eye of garish day, in those fastidious establishments, could no more endure such a walking personification of idle gossip, than a ball-room, at high twelve, could tolerate the intrusion of a man in a short coat, with a pen stuck in his ear. But this is by no means the general case; and even in some instances, where the front shop will not admit of such an appendage, ten to one but, if the premises were well ransacked, you would find a specimen of the class snug in some out-of-the-way corner, filling up the greater part of his time with a newspaper, but every now and then resorted to by his votary, in the intervals of actual employment, like an Egeria receiving the visits of a Numa, and no doubt administering equally precious counsel. The more common position of a shopkeeper’s confessor is a chair opposite the door, whence he may command a view of all that passes on the street, with a full front inspection of every individual that makes bold to enter. Into this chair the confessor invariably glides as a matter of course. There he sits down, and, throwing one limb over the other, considers himself entitled to inflict his company upon the unhappy shopkeeper for any length of time. He notices, as if he were not noticing, all that goes on in the premises. Not an order is given for goods, not a payment made, or a pennyworth sold, but it is seen, and very likely made the subject of after comment. It is of no consequence to the confessor what description of customers enter the place. Were a princess of the blood to come in, he would keep his seat and his countenance equally unmoved, and a whole band of ladies, driven in to escape a shower of rain, will not stir him from the chair, to which he seems nailed, like the marble prince of the Black Islands, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The customers very naturally feel disinclined to patronise a shop which is thus, as it were, haunted by an evil spirit. “Oh, how I do hate to enter that shop of Mr Such-a-thing,” says one young lady to another, “for every thing you do or say is noticed by that odious person who is always lounging there.” And in this manner Mr Such-a-thing loses his business, almost without the possibility of recalling it. He longs to discover a means of disposing of the confessor, but he finds a great difficulty in accomplishing his purpose.