No limit! With your brains and
experience."
That had been the beginning. From then on the thing had
moved forward with a certain inevitableness. There was
something about the vastness of the thing that appealed to
Fanny. Here was an organization whose great arms embraced
the world. Haynes-Cooper, giant among mail-order houses,
was said to eat a small-town merchant every morning for
breakfast.
"There's a Haynes-Cooper catalogue in every farmer's
kitchen," Molly Brandeis used to say. "The Bible's in the
parlor, but they keep the H. C. book in the room where they
live."
That she was about to affiliate herself with this house
appealed to Fanny Brandeis's sense of comedy. She had heard
her mother presenting her arguments to the stubborn farmer
folk who insisted on ordering their stove, or dinner set, or
plow, or kitchen goods from the fascinating catalogue. "I
honestly think it's just the craving for excitement that
makes them do it," she often said. "They want the thrill
they get when they receive a box from Chicago, and open it,
and take off the wrappings, and dig out the thing they
ordered from a picture, not knowing whether it will be right
or wrong.
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