ABSTRACT
I left my brother’s house in London, and arrived at Stamford, where I found Mr McGuffog’s establishment all that was stated, and his house respectable and comfortable. This was a most fortunate introduction for me into active life. Mr James McGuffog was a Scotchman, thoroughly honest, and a good man of business, – very methodical, kind, and liberal, and much respected by his neighbours and customers, and also, for his punctuality and good sense, by those from whom he purchased his goods for sale; and I was fortunate in obtaining such a man for my first master. He told me that he had commenced life in Scotland with half a crown, laid it out in the purchase of some things for sale, and hawked them in a basket. That by degrees he changed his basket for a pack, with which he travelled the country, acquiring knowledge through experience, and increasing his stock until he got, first a horse, and then a horse and covered van. He made his regular rounds among customers of the first respectability in Lincolnshire and the adjoining counties, until he was requested by the nobility and principal families and farmers around Stamford, to open an establishment there for the sale of the best and finest articles of female wear, for which, for some time in his travelling capacity, he had become celebrated. When I came to his house he had been some years established in it, and was beginning to be so independent that he made all his purchases with ready money and was becoming wealthy. He had married a daughter a of a well doing middle class person, and they appeared to live on very good terms with each other, and both were industrious, always attending to their business, yet respectable at all times in their persons, and altogether superior as retail tradespeople, being quite the aristocracy of that class, without its usual weak vanities. They had at this time an assistant of the name of Sloane, about thirty-five years of age, a bachelor; and also a youth about my own age, nephew to McGuffog.
