CHAPTER X.
THE TIN-PEDLER.
Those of my readers who live in large cities are probably not
familiar with the travelling tin-pedler, who makes his appearance at
frequent intervals in the country towns and villages of New England.
His stock of tinware embraces a large variety of articles for
culinary purposes, ranging from milk-pans to nutmeg-graters. These
are contained in a wagon of large capacity, in shape like a box, on
which he sits enthroned a merchant prince. Unlike most traders, he
receives little money, most of his transactions being in the form of
a barter, whereby be exchanges his merchandise for rags, white and
colored, which have accumulated in the household, and are gladly
traded off for bright tinware. Behind the cart usually depend two
immense bags, one for white, the other for colored rags, which, in
time, are sold to paper manufacturers. It may be that the very paper
on which this description is printed, was manufactured from rags so
collected.
Abner Bickford was the proprietor of such an establishment as I have
described. No one, at first sight, would have hesitated to class him
as a Yankee. He was long in the limbs, and long in the face, with a
shrewd twinkle in the eye, a long nose, and the expression of a man
who respected himself and feared nobody. He was unpolished, in his
manners, and knew little of books, but he belonged to the same
resolute and hardy type of men who in years past sprang to arms, and
fought bravely for an idea.
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