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Cooper, James A.

"Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper"

Cap'n Abe's somewheres around.
He always is."
Thus encouraged by the driver the woman stalked up the store steps.
She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried
considerable flesh. She could carry this well, however, and did. Her
traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode,
but in no extreme. This well-bred, haughty, but perspiring woman
approached the entrance to Cap'n Abe's store in a spirit of frank
disapproval.
On the threshold she halted with an audible gasp, indicating amazement.
Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange
conglomeration of goods for sale--on the shelves the rows of glowingly
labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green
cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows
of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of
hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of
cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there. It was not so much
a store as it was a warehouse displaying many articles the names and
uses for which the lady did not even know.


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