The Queen of Sheba and my Cousin the Colonel by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The recruiting-office at Rivermouth was in a small, unpainted, / weather-stained building on Anchor Street, not far from the / custom-house. The tumble-down shell had long remained tenantless, and / now, with its mouse-colored exterior, easily lent itself to its present / requirements as a little military mouse-trap. In former years it had / been occupied as a thread-and-needle and candy shop by one Dame / Trippew. All such petty shops in the town were always kept by old / women, and these old women were always styled dames. It is to be / lamented that they and their innocent traffic have vanished into the / unknown.

The interior of the building, consisting of one room and an attic / covered by a lean-to roof, had undergone no change beyond the removal / of Dame Trippew's pathetic stock at the time of her bankruptcy. The / narrow counter, painted pea-green and divided in the centre by a / swinging gate, still stretched from wall to wall at the farther end of / the room, and behind the counter rose a series of small wooden drawers, / which now held nothing but a fleeting and inaccurate memory of the / lavender, and pennyroyal, and the other sweet herbs that used to be / deposited in them. Even the tiny cow-bell, which once served to warn / Dame Trippew of the advent of a customer, still hung from a bit of / curved iron on the inner side of the street-door, and continued to give / out a petulant, spasmodic jingle whenever that door was opened, however / cautiously. If the good soul could have returned to the scene of her / terrestrial commerce, she might have resumed business at the old stand / without making any alterations whatever. Everything remained precisely / as she had left it at the instant of her exit. But a wide gulf / separated Dame Trippew from the present occupant of the premises. Dame / Trippew's slight figure, with its crisp, snowy cap and apron, and / steel-bowed spectacles, had been replaced by the stalwart personage of / a sergeant of artillery in the regular army, between whose overhanging / red mustache and the faint white down that had of late years come to / Dame Trippew's upper lip, it would have been impossible to establish a / parallel. The only things these two might have claimed in common were a / slackness of trade and a liking for the aromatic Virginia leaf, though / Dame Trippew had taken hers in a dainty idealistic powder, and the / sergeant took his in realistic plug through the medium of an aggressive / clay pipe.