To conclude:  the credit raised by the fine show of things is also of a different kind from the substantial reputation of a tradesman; it is rather the credit of the shop, than of the man; and, in a word, it is no more or less than a net spread to catch fools; it is a bait to allure and deceive, and the tradesman generally intends it so.  He intends that the customers shall pay for the gilding and painting his shop, and it is the use he really makes of it, namely, that his shop looking like something eminent, he may sell dearer than his neighbours:  who, and what kind of fools can so be drawn in, it is easy to describe, but satire is none of our business here.

On the contrary, the customers, who are the substantial dependence of a tradesman’s shop, are such as are gained and preserved by good usage, good pennyworths, good wares, and good choice; and a shop that has the reputation of these four, like good wine that needs no bush, needs no painting and gilding, no carved works and ornaments;[31] it requires only a diligent master and a faithful servant, and it will never want a trade.

FOOTNOTES: 

[29] [In another place, the author recommends a light stock, as showing a nimble trade.  There can be little doubt that he is more reasonable here.  A considerable abundance of goods is certainly an attraction to a shop.  No doubt, a tradesman with little capital would only be incurring certain ruin having a larger stock than he could readily pay for.  He must needs keep a small stock, if he would have a chance at all of doing well in the world.  But this does not make it the less an advantage to a tradesman of good capital to keep an abundant and various stock of goods.]

[30] [It is really curious to find in this chapter the same contrast drawn between the old and the new style of fitting up shops, and carrying on business, as would be drawn at the present day by nine out of every ten common observers.  The notion that the shops of the past age were plain, while those of the present are gaudy, and that the tradesmen of a past age carried on all their business in a quiet way and with little expense, is as strongly impressed on the minds of the present generation, as it is here seen to have been on those of Defoe’s contemporaries, a hundred and twenty years ago, although it is quite impossible that the notion can be just in both cases.  The truth probably is, that in Defoe’s time, and at all former times, there were conspicuous, but not very numerous, examples of finely decorated shops, which seemed, and really were, very much of a novelty, as well as a rather striking exception from the style in which such places in general were then, and had for many years been furnished.  So far, however, from these proving, as Defoe anticipates, a warning to future generations, the general appearance of shops has experienced a vast improvement since those days;