“Do you mean to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock?  Do you presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green satin necktie with a pink shirt?  If you had ever been off this little island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in jewels, is understood, you would realise the impertinence of criticising the taste of an American woman, who is trying to find something worth while buying in so hopelessly British a shop as this.  Now, my good man,” I added, taking up my parasol and purse, “I shall not report your rudeness to the proprietor, because doubtless you have a family to support, and I don’t wish to make you lose your place, but let this be a warning to you never to be so insolent again,” and with that, I simply swept out of his shop.  I seldom sweep out.  Bee says I generally crawl out, but this time I was so inflated with an unholy joy that I recklessly cabled to Paris for Jimmie’s pearls, and to this day I rejoice at the way that man covered his green satin tie with his large hairy red hand, and at the ecstatic smiles on the faces of two clerks standing near, for I knew he was the proprietor when I called him “My good man.”

If you want to open an account in London, you have to be vouched for by another commercial house.  They won’t take your personal friends, no matter how wealthy, no matter if they are titled.  Your bank’s opinion of you is no good.  Neither does it avail you how well and favourably you are known at your hotel for paying your bill promptly.  This, and the custom in several large department stores of never returning your money if you take back goods, but making you spend it, not in the store, but in the department in which you have bought, makes shopping for dry goods excessively annoying to Americans.

I took back two silk blouses out of five that I bought at a large shop in Regent Street much frequented by Americans, which carries on a store near by under the same name, exclusively for mourning goods.  To my astonishment, I discovered that I must buy three more blouses, or else lose all the money I paid for them.  In my thirst for information, I asked the reason for this.  In America, a lady would consider the reason they gave an insult.  The shopwoman told me that ladies’ maids are so expert at copying that many ladies have six or eight garments sent home, kept a few days, copied by their maids and returned, and that this became so much the custom that they were finally forced to make that obnoxious rule.

I have heard complaints made in America by proprietors of large importing houses that women who keep accounts frequently order a handsome gown, wrap, or hat sent home on approval, wear it, and return it the next day.  If this is the custom among decent self-respecting American women, who masquerade in society in the guise of women of refinement and culture, no wonder that shopkeepers are obliged to protect themselves.  There is nowhere that the saying, “the innocent must suffer with the guilty,” obtains with so much force as in shopping, particularly in London.