Definition of "mercantile"

No sign was over his door; in fact—as with old banks and mercantile houses—advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment the trade of which came solely by connection based on personal respect.

1872, [Thomas Hardy], “II. A Meeting of the Choir”, in Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, part II, page 139