After having completely made up his mind to take a particular shop, he goes and asks advice. His confessor[7] readily consents to take a walk with him in that direction, and give his candid opinion upon the subject. The two walk arm in arm past the premises, the confessor alone looking, lest, in endeavouring to observe, they should themselves be observed. “I’ll tell you what,” says the confessor, “I like that shop very much. If the rent be at all suitable, I think you might do very well in it.” It is then proposed that the confessor should step in to inquire the rent; for though there be equal reasons why each should not expose himself as being on the outlook for a shop, the person not actually concerned has always least reluctance to submit to that disadvantage, being borne up, it would appear, by a conscious absence of design, while the guilt of the other would be betrayed by his first question. If the confessor reports favourably, then the individual who wants the premises ventures in himself, inspects the accommodations, and makes farther inquiries. The two afterwards retire together, and have a deep and serious consultation upon the subject. In the deliberations of a person about to enter life in this way, there is always much that is extravagant, and much that is vague. I never yet knew it fail, that, if there was success at all, it arose from different sources from those which had been most securely calculated upon as likely to produce it. Suppose it is a business for the supply of some ordinary necessary of life: the novice reckons up almost all the people he knows in different parts of the town, as sure to become his customers; he expects, indeed, hardly any other kind of support. It is found, however, when he commences, that one friend is engaged in one way, and another in another, so that, with the exception, perhaps, of some benevolent old lady, who sends occasionally to buy a few trifles from him _upon principle_, all is waste and barren where he expected to reap a plentiful harvest. He finds, however, on the other hand, that he gets customers where he did not expect them. People seem to rise out of the earth, like the men of Cadmus, to buy from him. The truth is, he is resorted to by those who are disengaged at the time, and to whom his shop is convenient; and all the good-will of all the friends in the world will not get over, for his sake, the difficulty of some engagement elsewhere, or the inconvenience of distance.