Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/91

 The store which we now entered was the first which I had seen "over the hills," and was a good average specimen of similar emporiums in the country districts. On one side of the shop, where the grocery was sold, there stood a heavy weighing-machine and a tub of salt fish; crockery, gown-pieces, paraffin lamps, and woollen goods were ranged on the shelves; boots, reaping-hooks, coats, kettles, hanks of twine, and common tin-ware dangled from the rafters; camp-ovens and iron saucepans lumbered the floor; and under a glass-case was a dowdy little collection of millinery and fancy goods, the last worthy of their name only from the prices which were attached to them, whilst as to the millinery, I may here say in parenthesis, that I never saw any, even in the best colonial stores, which looked as if it could have come from any quarter more fashionable than the Edgware Road.

Of books there was a shelf containing eleven copies of M. Thiers' 'History of the French Revolution,' bought by the store-keeper in a "job lot," and originally published at ten shillings, but now offered for sale at one guinea apiece. This, however, might have inspired us with the encouraging thought that the colonists were so fond of reading that they were ready to pay any price for books; but we were damped by finding that whereas M. Thiers' works were only ticketed at twice their value, the cost of many necessary articles of daily use was fixed at a still higher rate.

But the mysteries of stores and store-keeping in Western Australia were not to be fathomed in a single visit; they were such as could only be revealed by time accompanied with dear-bought experience. I found that it was