A public sale was on and the walks were thronged.  Women in fine silks and millinery; men in tall beaver hats and broadcloth and fine linen touched elbows with the hairy, rough clad men of the prairies and their worn wives in old-fashioned bonnets and faded coats.

The two New Salem men stopped and studied a big sign in front of a large store on which this announcement had been lettered: 

“Cloths, cassinettes, cassimeres, velvet silks, satins, Marseilles waistcoating, fine, calf boots, seal and morocco pumps for gentlemen, crepe lisse, lace veils.  Thibet shawls, fine prunella shoes.”

“Reads like a foreign language to me,” said Abe.  “The pomp of the East has got here at last.  I’d like to know what seal and morocco pumps are.  I reckon they’re a contrivance that goes down into a man’s pocket and sucks it dry.  I wonder what a cassinette is like, and a prunella shoe.  How would you like a little Marseilles waistcoating?”

Suddenly a man touched his shoulder with a hearty “Howdy, Abe?”

It was Eli, “the wandering Jew,” as he had been wont to call himself in the days when he carried a pack on the road through Peter’s Bluff and Clary’s Grove and New Salem to Beardstown and back.

“Dis is my store,” said Eli.

“Your store!” Abe exclaimed.

“Ya, look at de sign.”

The Jew pointed to his sign-board, some fifty feet long under the cornice, on which they read the legend: 

  “Eli Fredenberg’s Emporium.”

Abe looked him over from head to foot and exclaimed: 

“My conscience!  You look as if you had been fixed up to be sold to the highest bidder.”

The hairy, dusty, bow-legged, threadbare peddler had been touched by some miraculous hand.  The lavish hand of the West had showered her favors on him.  They resembled in some degree the barbaric pearl and gold of the East.  He glowed with prosperity.  Diamonds and ruffled linen and Scotch plaid and red silk on his neck and a blue band on his hat and a smooth-shorn face and perfumery were the glittering details that surrounded the person of Eli.

“Come in,” urged the genial proprietor of the Emporium.  “I vould like to show you my goots and introduce you to my brudder.”

They went in and met his brother and had their curiosity satisfied as to the look and feel of cassinettes and waistcoatings and seal and morocco pumps and prunella shoes.

In the men’s department after much thoughtful discussion they decided upon a suit of blue jeans—­that being the only goods which, in view of the amount of cloth required, came within the appropriation.  Eli advised against it.

“You are like Eli already,” he said.  “You haf got de pack off your back.  Look at me.  Don’t you hear my clothes say somet’ing?”

“They are very eloquent,” said Abe.

“Vell dey make a speech.  Dey say ’Eli Fredenberg he is no more a poor devil.  You can not sneeze at him once again.  Nefer.  He has climb de ladder up.’  Now you let me sell you somet’ing vat makes a good speech for you.”