The bartender, after he had waked up to the situation, explained that the man the police wanted had left by the rear door and that was the last we saw of the cops. The bartender then turned to us and ejaculated:
“Well, you two fellows do extract the sweet all right. Here you are chumming together and you don’t even know each other’s names. Just you have one on the house while I introduce you,” which we did and as we clinked the glasses, the bartender said:
“Bless you, my children! Harry Monroe never fired a truer shot than when he drew bead on Jack Henderson, for he brought down a friend—get together there,” and we drank and shook hands.
That was my introduction to Harry Monroe, and a whiter rounder never lived. The only trouble with him was he was obliged to divide his time between living and earning money to live on. Harry got to telling me about his selling lumber on the road and how he did it, but it looked a little punk to me and I told him so. After I said that there was nothing for me to do but to make a trip with him and see how it was done.
He was going to make a trip over a route that he had never traveled before, and he told me it would give me an insight into life that I couldn’t get in any other way. I went and the first town we struck was a little place up in northern Kansas, and the first office we got into was plastered all over with temperance signs. I took a look at Harry to see how he took it, but it never feazed him. He introduced himself to Mr. Brown, the proprietor, and then introduced me as his cousin and said I was traveling for my health. Then he dropped into a chair by the side of Brown and reeled off a string of temperance talk that would have put the average temperance lecturer in the ditch. I never knew what a fearful thing drink was before. Harry fairly cried when he told the dealer how his father and three sisters went to the bad on account of drink. Then Harry told him a story about a man who sold his wife’s washboard for drink, and, said Harry:
“Just think, she was the only support of her husband and six little children;” then they both cried. We spent two hours in that office and when it was almost train time Harry mentioned his business and took an order for eight cars of lumber. We made a quick get-away to catch the train, and I want to say right here that I was feeling sort of punk about that story of Harry’s three sisters. After we got seated in the car and I found I could not keep the destruction of Harry’s family out of my mind, I said to him:
“Harry, is your father dead?”
“Dead, well I should say not! He is preaching down in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and holding his own with the best of them.”
“And those sisters of yours?” I added.
“Oh, yes, those sisters, I see now. Well, you see Jack, I never had any sisters, that’s why I can put them to the bad so easy. It’s like this, Jack, every one you meet has to have what they call down south, ‘Lagniappe;’ in the north we call it perquisites or graft. In reality it is a tip given by one person to another. Now, a salesman is called on to give out more kinds of tips and give them out in more different ways than any other man that travels. Sometimes we give cigars, sometimes it’s a drink or a dinner, and sometimes soft-soap, and other times its tears, but to be a success on the road you must give something.”