Ladies who, in order to correct the inequalities of fortune, or to counteract a spendthrift husband, have betaken themselves to the keeping of shops, form a large and rapidly-increasing body.  In times so ancient as to be scarcely within the memory of a juvenile dowager, it was held by the high dry exponents of aristocratic privilege that to touch trade, even when it proffered a bag of money in a well-gloved hand, was to be defiled beyond the restoring power of a Belgravian Duchess.  To be sure, even the highest and the driest of these censors contrived to close an indulgent eye when a moneyless scion of nobility sought to prop his tottering house by rebuilding it upon a commercial foundation, and cementing it with the dower of a “tradesman’s” daughter.  But if these blameless ones, whose exclusive dust has long since been consigned to family vaults with appropriate inscriptions, could have foreseen the dreadful inroads of the trading spirit, if in a moment of prophetic rapture they could have watched the painful decay of caste which permits a lady to dabble in bonnets, to toy with the making of fancy frames, to cut dresses almost like a dressmaker, and, horror of horrors, to send in bills to her customers, surely they would have refrained from the tomb in order to stem the tide of advancing demoralisation.  But they are dead, and we who remain are left to deal as best we may with the uncompromising spirit of the age.

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It is absolutely essential to the proper production of a Lady Shopkeeper that she should have been at one time both affluent and socially distinguished.  If to these qualities she can add the supreme advantage of good looks and a modest demeanour, her career is certain to be a prosperous and a rapid one.  If, finally, she has been mated to a husband who, having long ago spent his own cash, contrives in a short time to run a best on record through hers, if he is a good fellow of a sort, with a capacity for making friends which is as large as his generosity in staking money, she may be sure that no element will be wanting to her success.  It is of course unnecessary that she should have served any apprenticeship to the trade that she ultimately adopts.  When, after some glittering seasons of horses and footmen and brilliant parties, the crash comes upon the little household, her friends will be called into council.  Some will recommend a retired life in a distant suburb, where it is currently reported that L250 a year may be made to play the part of L2,000 in the heart of May Fair.  Others will hint that governesses have been known, after years of painful labour, to lay by a sufficiency for a short old age; others, again, will dive into the storehouse of their reminiscences, in order to produce for inspection the well-known example of a colonel and his wife, who defied both the fates and the rheumatism in the modest pension of a Continental watering-place.  All these suggestions, however, are eventually put aside in favour of the