"'Pretty well, thank you,' said I.
"'What! Can you hear and talk?' half yelled the old man.
"'To be sure,' I wrote back, 'but it would have been impolite to talk to you; because you said, as I drew near the window, you didn't wish to listen to a traveling man this morning. Thank you for your order. Good-bye.'
"The old man never forgot that day. The last time I was around, he said, 'Confound you, Billy! What makes you ask me if I want any baby shoes? You know I do and that I want yours. I believe, though, if you were to die I'd have to quit handling the line; it would seem so strange to buy them from any but a deaf and dumb man.'"
It is all right for the traveling man to put his wit against the peculiarities of a wise, crusty old buyer, but it is wrong to play smart with a confiding merchant who knows comparatively little of the world. The innocent will learn.
A clothing man once told me of a sharp scheme he once worked on a
Minnesota merchant.
"When I was up in Saint Paul on my last trip," said he, "a country merchant—what a 'yokel' he was!—came in to meet me. He had written my house he wanted to see their line. But when he reached the hotel another clothing man grabbed him and got him to say he would look at his line after he had seen mine. When he came into my room, I could see something was wrong. I could not get him to lay out a single garment. When a merchant begins to put samples aside, you've got him sure. After a while, he said: 'Well, I want to knock around a little; I'll be in to see you after dinner.'
"'I am expecting you to dine with me,' said I. 'It's after eleven now; you won't have time to go around any. You'd better wait until this afternoon.' I smelt a mouse, as there were other clothing men in town; so I knew I must hold him. But he was hard to entertain. He wouldn't smoke and wouldn't drink anything but lemonade. Deliver me from the merchant who is on the water wagon or won't even take a cigar! He's hard to get next to. After we finished our lemonade, I brought out my family photographs and kept him listening to me tell how bright my children were—until noon.
"When we finished luncheon I suggested that we go up and do our business as I wanted to leave town as soon as I could. Then he told me he felt he ought to look at another line before buying and that he had promised another man he would look at his line.
"Had I 'bucked' on that proposition it would have knocked me out, so I said: 'To be sure you should. I certainly do not wish you to buy my goods unless they please you better than any you will see. We claim we are doing business on a more economical scale than any concern in the country. We know this, and I shall be only too glad to have you look at other goods; then you will be better satisfied with ours. I'll take pleasure even in introducing you to several clothing men right here in the house.'