I believe those heartless wretches told each other the mistakes I made, for they kept coming and coming, looking as sweet as honey and as sly as foxes.

Father said I'd break him if I didn't stop making blunders in giving change--he wasn't in the prize-candy business, and couldn't afford to have me give twenty-five sheets of note paper, a box of pens, six corset laces, a bunch of whalebones, and two dollars and fifty cents change for a two-dollar bill.
He explained to me that the safety-pins which I had offered Emma Jones for crochet-needles were _not_ crochet-needles; nor the red wafers I had shown Mary Smith for gum-drops, gum-drops--that gingham was not three dollars per yard, nor pale-blue silk twelve-and-a-half cents, even to Squire Marigold's daughter.

He said I must be more careful.
"I don't think the mercantile business is my _forte_, father," said I.
"Your fort!" replied the old gentleman; "fiddlesticks! We have nothing to do with military matters.

But if you think you have a special call to anything, John, speak out.

Would you like to study for the ministry, my son ?" "Oh, no, indeed! I don't know exactly what I would like, unless it were to be a Juan Fernandez, or a--a light-house keeper." Then father said I was a disgrace to him, and I knew I was.
On the fourth day some young fellows came to see me, and told me there was to be a picnic on Saturday, and I must get father's horse and buggy and take one of the girls.