It is a part of youth to crave for high-sounding names and occupations.

It is in the mother's milk they feed on.

Mothers dream of their babes growing up into presidents or at least ambassadors, if sons; titles and brilliant literary salons, if daughters.

What living mother would harbor a dream of a clerkship in a haberdasher's shop?
Perish the thought! Myself for years was told that I had as good a chance as anybody of being president of the United States; a far better chance than many, being as I was _my_ mother's son.
Irish blood and romance will always be mysteriously intertwined.
Haberdasher did not fit in anywhere with Kitty's projects; it was off-key, a jarring note.

Whoever heard of a haberdasher's clerk reading _Morte d'Arthur_ and writing sonnets?
She was reasonably certain that while Thomas had jotted it down in scornful self-flagellation, it occupied a place somewhere in his past.
"They turne out ther trashe And shew ther haberdashe, Ther pylde pedlarye." There's no romance in collars and cuffs and ties and suspenders..