"Well, that must have made you feel good," spoke up the shoeman. "I had pretty much the same sort of an experience this very season down south here. I had been calling on a fair-sized merchant in the town for a couple of years. The first time I went to his town I sold him a handful. The next time I sold him another handful. The third time I called on him he didn't give me any more business. I had just about marked him down for a piker. You know how we all love those pikers, anyway. These fellows who buy a little from you and a little from the other fellow—in fact, a little from every good line that comes around—just to keep the other merchants in the town from getting the line and not giving enough to any one man to justify him in taking care of the account or caring anything about it. He was one of those fellows who would cut off his nose and his ears and burn his eyes out just to spite his face.
"This trip, as usual, I sold him his little jag. I didn't say anything to him, but thought it was high time I was going out and looking up another customer. I finally found another man who gave me a decent bill—between seven and eight hundred dollars—and he promised me that he would handle my line right along if the stuff turned out all O.K. He said he wasn't the biggest man in the town at that time but that his business was growing steadily and that he had just sold a farm and was going to put more money into the business and enlarge the store. He struck me as being the man in the town for me.
"My piker friend had seen me walking over to the sample room with this other man. When I dropped around, after packing up, to say good-bye, he said to me, 'I saw you going over to your sample room with this man down street here. I suppose, of course, you didn't sell him anything?'
"'To be sure I did,' said I. 'Why, why shouldn't I? You haven't been giving me enough to pay my expenses in coming to the town, much less to leave any profit for me.' "'Well, if you can't sell me exclusively, you can't sell me at all,' said he, rearing back.
"'All right,' said I. 'I won't sell you at all if that's the case. Here's your order. Do with it what you please. In fact, I won't even grant you that privilege. I myself shall call it off. Here goes.' And with this I tore up his order."
"Served him right," said the men's clothing man. "Did you ever know
Grain out on the Great Northern?"
"Sure," said the shoe man. "Who doesn't know that pompous know-it- all?"
"Well, sir, do you know that fellow isn't satisfied with any one he deals with, and he thinks that this whole country belongs to him. He wrote me several seasons ago to come out to see him. He had heard one of the boys speak well of my line of goods. I went to his town and first thing I did was to open up. Then I went into his store and told him I was all ready.
"'Well, I've decided,' said he, 'that I won't buy anything in your line this season.'
"'You will at least come over and give me a look, in that I have come over at your special request, will you not?"