The master may have gained customers with difficulty, by the exercise of much ingenuity, patience, and industry, or through some peculiar merit of his own.

Indeed, it is always to be presumed that a tradesman's customers are attached to him from some of these causes.

Of course, it would be hard if his apprentices, instead of collecting customers for themselves by the same means, seduced away those of his master.

The true and direct object of an apprenticeship is to acquire a trade, not to acquire customers.].