Now when you
enter this man's shop you do not go straight to the point but you ask
him to sell you something, and if it is anything with which he can
supply you he hands it you and wishes you good-morning. It is his
way. And many have been deceived by asking for some unlikely thing,
such as the oyster-shell from which was taken one of those single
pearls that made the gates of Heaven in Revelations, and finding that
the old man had it in stock.
He was comatose when I went into the shop, his heavy lids almost
covered his little eyes; he sat, and his mouth was open. I said, "I
want some of Abama and Pharpah, rivers of Damascus." "How much?" he
said. "Two and a half yards of each, to be delivered to my flat."
"That is very tiresome," he muttered, "very tiresome. We do not stock
it in that quantity." "Then I will take all you have," I said.
He rose laboriously and looked among some bottles. I saw one
labelled: Nilos, river of AEgyptos; and others Holy Ganges, Phlegethon,
Jordan; I was almost afraid he had it, when I heard him mutter again,
"This is very tiresome," and presently he said, "We are out of it."
"Then," I said, "I wish you to tell me the way to those little
cottages in whose upper chambers poets look out upon the fields we
know not, for I wish to go into the Land of Dream and to sail once
more upon mighty, sea-like Yann."
At that he moved heavily and slowly in way-worn carpet slippers,
panting as he went, to the back part of his shop, and I went with him.
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