"I see. They get low wages and don't work too much and are ahead of the game, after all. Is that it? Well, well. But you're a smart fellow, just the same."
I explained to him why my men earned more than they would in the big shops, and the upshot was an order for a hundred suits. Twenty of these were to be copies of the brown-cheviot garment which was the subject of his challenge, I buying that suit of him, so as to use it as a sample
On my way home I exhibited that suit to merchants in other cities, giving it out for my own product. It was really an attractive garment and it brought me half a dozen additional sales.
I developed into an excellent salesman. If I were asked to name some single element of my success on the road I should mention the enthusiasm with which I usually spoke of my merchandise. It was genuine, and it was contagious.
Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my goods.
CHAPTER IV
THE road was a great school of business and life to me. I visited scores of cities. I met hundreds of human types. I saw much of the United States.
Every time I returned home I felt as though, in comparison with the places which I had just visited, New York was not an American city at all, and as though my last trip had greatly added to the "real American" quality in me
Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in the world. I could not go to bed in a Pullman car, walk over the springy "runner" of a hotel corridor, unfold the immense napkin of a hotel dining-room, or shake down my trousers upon alighting from a boot-black's chair, without being conscious of the difference between my present life and my life in Antomir
I was full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but there was usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. While on the road I would feel homesick for New York, and at the same time I would feel that I had no home anywhere, that my mother was dead and I was all alone in the world.