“Well, Bob,” said he, with a gleeful smile, “here’s something at last that will do you good.” I smiled, and shook my head. “Well, well, so you always say,” said my friend, who perfectly understood me; “but you cannot miss this time. I have just heard from a confidential friend that Mr Bowman is about to retire from business, and that he is on the lookout for a respectable person to purchase his stock in trade, and the good will of his shop, privately. Now, Bob, that’s just the thing for you. You know the trade; you know, too, that Mr Bowman has realised a handsome fortune in it, and that his shop, where that fortune was made, has the best business in town.” Now, all this that my friend said was true, perfectly true. Mr Bowman had made a fortune in the shop alluded to. It had by far the best run in town: it was crowded with customers from morning till night. But I felt quite confident that the moment _I_ took the shop there would be an end of its prosperity. However, my friends prevailed. To please them, and to show that I was willing to do any thing to better my circumstances, I took the shop. I bought the stock and good will of the business, and entered on possession. My friends all congratulated me, and declared that my fortune was made. I knew better. However, to give the speculation fair play, a thing I thought due to it, I prevailed on Mr Bowman to forego the usual proceeding in such cases of advertising his retirement from business and recommending _me_ as his successor, because I knew that if he did so, all chance of my doing any good would be instantly knocked on the head. Recommend me! Why, the bare mention of my name--any allusion to it--would be certain and immediate destruction to me. I knew that if the public was made aware that _I_ had succeeded to the business, it would instantly desert the shop. Impressed with this conviction, I had the whole matter and manner of the transfer of property and interest in the shop managed with the utmost privacy and secrecy, my object being to slip unperceived and unobserved, as it were, into my predecessor’s place, that the public might not have the slightest hint of the change. In order further to secure this important secret, I would not permit the slightest alteration to be made, either on the shop itself, or on any of its multifarious contents. I would not allow a box, or an article of any kind, not even a nail, to be removed or shifted from its place, for fear of giving the public the slightest clue to the fact of the shop’s being now mine. As to my own appearance in it, which of course could not be avoided, I hoped that I might pass for a shopman of Mr Bowman’s.