“Folks won’t pay the prices you ought to ask to make a penny on it.”

“Oh, I am not so sure of that.  People want a good article, and very few raise potatoes or cabbages or even turnips in their own gardens.”

“Ingram is selling potatoes two cents less than you, and I rather think turnips, too.”

“Not these turnips.”

“No, guess not.  He has his from another man, but they look pretty good, and half the folks don’t know the dif.”

“Well,” Anderson replied, “sell them for less, if you have to, rather than keep them.  Selling a superfine article for no profit is sometimes the best and cheapest advertisement in the world.”

Anderson stood a while observing the display of vegetables and fruit piled on the sidewalk before his store and in the store window.  He took a certain honest pleasure of proprietorship, and also an artistic delight in it.  He observed the great green cabbages, like enormous roses, the turnips, like ivory carvings veined with purplish rose towards their roots, the smooth russet of the potatoes.  There were also baskets of fine grapes, the tender pink bloom of Delawares, and the pale emerald of Niagaras, with the plummy gloss of Concords.  There were enormous green spheres of watermelons, baskets of superb peaches, each with a high light of rose like a pearl, and piles of bartlett and seckel pears.  There was something about all this magnificent plenty of the fruits of the earth which was impressive.  It was to an ardent fancy as if Flora and Pomona had been that way with their horns of plenty.  The sordid question of market value, however, was distinctly irritating, and yet it was justly so.  Why should not a man sell the fruits of the earth for dollars and cents with artistic and honorable dignity as anything else?  All commodities for the needs of mankind are marketable, are the instruments of traffic, whether they be groceries or books, boots and shoes, dishes or furniture, or pictures; whether they be songs or sermons or corn plasters or shaving-soap; whether they be food for the mind or the body.  What difference did it make which was dispensed?  It was all a question of need and supply.  The minister preached his sermons for the welfare of the soul; the Jew hawked his second-hand garments; everything was interwoven.  One must eat to live, to hear sermons, to hear songs, to love, to think, to read.  One must be clothed to tread the earth among his fellows.  There was need, and one supplied one need, one another.  All need was dignified by the man who possessed, all supply was dignified if one looked at it in the right way.  There was a certain dignity even about his own need of two cents more on those turnips, which were actually as beautiful as an ivory carving.  Anderson finally returned to his office, feeling a little impatient with himself that, in spite of his own perfect contentment with his business, he should now and then essay to justify himself in his contentment, as he undoubtedly did.  It was like a violinist screwing his instrument up to concert-pitch, below which it would drop from day to day.