His address was extremely insinuating, for he always endeavored to say the most agreeable things, and no man could judge more accurately what would best please the person addressed. He might be vain enough, but his egotism was never obtruded upon others. He might secretly felicitate himself upon a successful trade, but he never boasted of it. He seemed to be far more interested in the affairs of others than in his own. He had sympathy for the afflictions of his customers, counsel for their difficulties, triumph in their success. Before the introduction of mails, he was the universal news-carrier, and could tell all about the movements of the whole world. He could gossip over his wares with his female customers, till he beguiled them into endless purchases, for he had heard of every death, marriage, and birth within fifty miles. He recollected the precise piece of calico from which Mrs. Jones bought her last new dress, and the identical bolt of riband from which Mrs. Smith trimmed her "Sunday bonnet." He knew whose children went to "meeting" in "store-shoes," whose daughter was beginning to wear long dresses, and whose wife wore cotton hose. He could ring the changes on the "latest fashions" as glibly as the skilfulest _modiste_. He was a _connoisseur_ in colors, and learned in their effects upon complexion. He could laugh the husband into half-a-dozen shirts, flatter the wife into calico and gingham, and praise the children till both parents joined in dressing them anew from top to toe. He always sold his goods "at a ruinous sacrifice," but he seemed to have a depot of infinite extent and capacity, from which he annually drew new supplies. He invariably left a neighborhood the loser by his visit, and the close of each season found him inconsolable for his "losses." But the next year he was sure to come back, risen, like the Phoenix, from his own ashes, and ready to be ruined again--in the same way. He could never resist the pleading look of a pretty woman, and if she "jewed" him twenty per cent. (though his profits were only two hundred), the tenderness of his heart compelled him to yield. What wonder is it, then, if he was a prime favorite with all the women, or that his advent, to the children, made a day of jubilee? But the peddler, like every other human "institution," only had "his day." The time soon came when he was forced to give way before the march of newfangledness. The country grew densely populated, neighborhoods became thicker, and the smoke of one man's chimney could be seen from another's front-door. People's wants began to be permanent--they were no longer content with transient or periodical supplies--they demanded something more constant and regular. From this demand arose the little neighborhood "stores," established for each settlement at a central and convenient point--usually at "cross-roads," or next door to the blacksmith's shop--and these it was which superseded the peddler's trade.