As I guessed! These gentlemen are distressed
agriculturists, who prefer selling their own corn to sending it to
any of the numerous highly-respectable salesmen who occupy the
offices round the two markets. There are scores here of these
well-attired, healthy-faced, hearty-looking, stout-limbed, but
distressed individuals present, with not one of whom I should have
the slightest objection to dine to-day, or on any other day, for
that matter. But we must beware of rash judgments. Appearances are
often deceitful, and we know, besides, from high authority, that
grief is apt to puff up and swell a man sadly at times.
There is no possibility, an eminent salesman informed us, of making
even a proximate guess at the quantity of business done; neither, it
appears, is there any reliance to be placed upon the amount of
'arrivals' as given, either in the newspapers, or in the private
circulars issued weekly to the trade. Corn, in this market, is
usually sold at a month's credit, with discount for cash. The buyer
secures a sample of his purchase in a small canvas bag, and the
seller is of course bound to deliver the quantity agreed for at the
same weight and quality. There is one patent fact highly creditable
to our British cultivators, which I gather from a trade-circular
dated September 29, 1851, and this is, that foreign grains, wheats
especially, do not command anything like such prices as the English
varieties.
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