The Portland Daily Press

MISCELLANY.

Merry Times.-We have never seen our streets give better evidence of activity in business than they do this winter. Sleighing has been somewhat irregular, but when good it has been well improved, and when bad, there has been no lack of grumbling. Prices of things sold, as well as of things bought, are high, money is plenty, and everybody is busy in efforts to secure a little against time of scarcity. Nobody grumbles at prices. "Flour a shade higher," says the price current, and up go the retailers, to "ten to 'leven for fancies," and nobody objects. A few bales of cotton are burned by the rebels, and next day shirting has gone up 25 per cent. Wonder when it will fall any? Crapeau saws your wood for a dollar as readily as he did the same last year or a half. Messrs. What & Soforth made a thousand dollars last week by marking up their goods-resolving at the same time not to mark down again for any "little fluctuation in the market." One sells kerosene at 60 cts, and another at 50-because the latter forgot to note prices after they began to go down. He kept well posted while they were going up. Who stands for prices! Boggs has a load of barley upon which he has fixed no price. Doe offers 90-Roe winks 95-and Boggs takes winks at five cents each till he gets a dollar and thirty cts. a bushel for his barley. He feels just as well as he did last year when he sold for fifty cts. Haggle offers our dollars or a load of wood. "Not a bit" says driver "one of my neighbors got that or a load of brown ash yesterday." Haggle offers five, takes it. To day flour, wheat and corn are reported falling —as they were yesterday. Doe and Roe have not noticed the price current-not they. When corn was reported "firm" they saw it the same day, and marked up 10cts. Nobody stands for prices!-and coffee at 40cts. and tea at a dollar taste just as good as before Sumter fell.-[Waterville Mail.