There stepped from the elevator car a somewhat portly little man who joined Mr. Wharton.  He wore a rather queer looking, very big derby hat, oddly flat on top.  His shoulders were hooped up somewhat like the figure of Joseph Choate.  A rather funny, square, box-like body on little legs.  An English look to his clothes.  Under his arm an odd-looking club of a walking-stick.  Mr. Brownell turned quickly to this rather amusing though not undistinguished figure, and said, “Mr. James—­Brownell.”  The quaint gentleman took off his big hat, discovering to our intent curiosity a polished bald dome, and began instantly to talk, very earnestly, steadily, in a moderately pitched voice, gesticulating with an even rhythmic beat with his right hand, raised close to his face.

Joined presently by Mrs. Wharton, the party, bidding Mr. Brownell adieu, took a somewhat humorous departure (we felt) from the shop; Mr. James, with some suddenness, preceding out the door.  Moving nimbly up the Avenue, he was overhauled by Mrs. Wharton under full sail, who attached herself to his arm.  Her husband by an energetic forward play around the end achieved her other wing.  In this formation, sticks flashing, skirt whipping, with a somewhat spirited mien, the august spectacle receded from our rapt view, to be at length obliterated as a unit by the general human scene.

We saw Mr. James after this a number of times.  Accompanied again by Mrs. Wharton, and later in the charge (such was the effect) of another lady, who, we understood, drives regularly to her social chariot literary lions.  In something like six years’ observation of the human being in a book shop, we have never seen any person so thoroughly in a book store, a magazine, that is, of books, as Mr. James.  One can be, you know—­it is most common, indeed—­in a book store and at the same time not be in a book store—­any more than if one were in a hotel lobby.  Mr. James “snooked” around the shop.  He ran his nose over the tables, and inch by inch (he must be very shortsighted) along the walls, stood on tiptoe and pulled down volumes from high places, rummaged in dark corners, was apparently oblivious of the presence of anything but the books.  He was not the slightest in a hurry.  He would have been, we felt, content and quite happy, like a child with blocks, to play this way by himself all day.

Happening, by our close proximity, to turn to us the first time in the shop that he required attention, upon each succeeding visit he sought out us to attend to his wishes.  The position of retail salesman “on the floor” is one completely exposed to every human attitude and humour.  Against arrogance, against contempt of himself as a shop person, a species of “counter-jumper,” against irascibility, against bigoted ignorance, against an indissoluble assumption, perhaps logical, that he is of inferior mentality, this factotum has no defence.  His very business is to meet all with amenity.  It is his daily portion, included in the material with which he works.