"As I saw him pass on the other side of the street going home to dinner, I slid up to his store and took all his last shipment from his shelves and stacked them in the middle of the floor. About the time I had finished doing this he came back.
"'Why, what are you doing?' said he.
"'Well, I'll tell you, Sam. I don't want you to have anything in the house that doesn't suit you, and I would a great deal rather than you would fire all this stuff back to the house. Look up and see the amount of freight charges you paid on them. Meantime I'll run down to the hotel and get my book and make you out a check for whatever it comes to. Come on down to the corner with me anyway, Sam. Let's have a cigar and take the world easy. I'm not going out tonight.'
"Sam went down to the corner with me. In a few minutes I returned to the store with my check book in hand. As I went into his store Sam was putting my goods back on the shelves.
"'Got your samples open?' he said.
"'Sure, Sam,' said I. 'Did you suppose I was going to let you bluff me this way?' And that was the last time he ever tried to work the rebate racket on me."
"So long as a bluffer is warm about it," said the shoe man, "it's all right; but I do hate to go up against one of those cold bloods, even if he isn't a bluffer."
"That depends," said the clothing man. "There's one man I used to call on and every time I went to see him I felt like feeling of his pulse to see if it were beating. If I had taken hold of his wrist I would not have been surprised to find that the artery was filled with fine ice. Gee! but how he froze me. Somehow I could always get him to listen to me, but I could never get him to buy.
"One day, to my surprise, the minute I struck him he said, 'Samples open?' And when I told him 'Yes' he had his man in my department turn over a customer that he was waiting on, to another one of the boys, and took him right down to the sample room. I never sold an easier bill in my life, so you see a cold blood is all right if he freezes out the other fellow."
The goose that had twirled so long before the pine log blaze was now put before us. The Spanish Senor with his violin started the program, and our tales for the evening were at an end.