I now beg leave to report on the result of one of your pieces of advice as to ways and means in selling. A little while back, you remember, you said that I was pretty sure to run into a buyer who would bring me a pail of lard which he would say was made by a competitor, and ask what I thought of such stuff. Then, when I had condemned it by and large, you allowed he would tell me it was our own lard and the store would have the grand cachinnation on me. What I ought to say, you observed, was, that I didn't think So-and-So could produce such good stuff. That would clinch an order, sure enough—still according to you.
Well, I ran into the identical thing at Higginbotham Bros., in this town. Just as I was nailing an order for 200 pails with Lige Higginbotham, his brother Nat blew in with some lard that he said was made by Skinner & Co., our big rivals, and asked me what I thought of that for a bucket of slush.
I had presence of mind enough to remember what you had said, and I told him that it was a blamed sight better lard than I thought Skinner & Co. were capable of putting out. Then I waited for the laugh at Nat's expense, but there wasn't any. It was very, very quiet, a stillness relieved only by the working of Lige's jaws on his quid.
"Well," said he, after a pause that I knew was deadly, "if you, a competitor, say it's good lard, why, gosh dang it, it must be all right. And seein' that Skinner's always treated us white, I guess I'll telegraph that order for 200 pails instead of givin' it to you."
You see the lard was Skinner's, as I saw a minute afterwards by the cover on the pail. This little incident gives me serious doubts whether you can safely regard all men as liars.
There happens to be quite a jolly crowd of drummers of various persuasions at this hotel just at present, and last night we had a little seance in the smoking-room for mutual inspiration and advancement. The talk naturally got rather shoppy at last, and the fellows began bragging of the business they did. A drummer for grindstones said that he thought he'd average up about six sales a day, and a fellow in whiskey allowed that he would make at least ten. Then a Hebrew, who travelled with neckties, declared that he could take in about a dozen orders, and so it went. I modestly admitted that I was handicapped, and that two sales per diem were about all I could attain to under the circumstances. Of course that's more than I do make, but, as you say, you've got to impress the world with the fact that you're some pumpkins or you won't get assessed at even cucumbers.
They'd all got through their little yarns, except one thin-faced, quiet chap who sat in a corner and didn't have much to say. Finally the Hebrew pounced on him, thinking he'd have some fun at his expense.
"You hafn't told us vat you do, mein frent," he said to the quiet fellow. "Eferypody must speak in this exberience meeting. How many sales do you make?"
The man looked up with a sort of weary expression on his face and replied: