A pair of large shears swing prominently from an upright
partition. The department is orderly and neat, a mute tribute to those
who patronize it.
Into the show-cases has crept every article of small dimension that had
no habitat or kind upon the shelves around--from laces to lead pencils.
Upon nails in the rafters of the ceiling swing buckets and dippers and
lamps, currycombs and brushes.
Off in an L that runs at a right angle from the main store are bacon and
tires for wagon wheels, country-cured hams and brooms, flour, kerosene
and plows.
Under the counter by the door is an open wooden box of crackers, and its
exact location and the volume of the supply are known to every child in
the mountains around. Out of it comes their lagnappe for making a
journey to the store.
Beside the door upon a shelf sits the water-bucket, kept cool by
frequent replenishing from the York spring. Here every man who enters
stops; and, after he has shifted his quid of tobacco, looked around, and
made his cheerful greeting a hearty one with, "Howdy people!" he lifts
the dipper filled with its pleasing refreshment--and the surplus goes
accurately, in a crystal curve, to the back of some venturesome chicken
that has come upon the store porch.
Above the door as you enter hangs a stenciled, uneven, unpunctuated
sign, "NO CREDIT CASH OR BARTER.
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