"When I was about half through packing up, the old growler's clerk, who was a gentlemanly young fellow, came in and said to me, hesitatingly: 'Old man, I hate to tell you, but the boss told me to come over and say to you not to ship that bill of goods he gave you until he ordered it. He is very unreasonable, you know, and is kicking because you sold some stuff to the dry goods man down the street.'
"'Thank you, Gus,' said I to the clerk. I was mad as fire, but not at him, of course. 'Now, Gus, the old man has sent me a message by you. I'll let you take one back to him. Now, mind you, you and I are good friends, Gus. Tell him I say he can take his business, including this order, and go with it now and forever clean smack back to—well, you know the rest. Then tell him, Gus, that I've sold not only this dry goods man a bill but also his strongest competitor over $1,300 worth of goods. Tell him, furthermore, that I personally appreciate all the favors he has done for me in the past, in a personal way; that I have enjoyed visiting with him; that whenever I come back to this town again in the future, I shall come in to see him; that if I can do him a personal favor in any way, at any time, anywhere, I shall be only too glad to do so, but that, absolutely, our business relationship is at an end.'
"'All right,' said Gus. 'I'll repeat to the old man every word you've said. I'm glad you've called him down. It'll do him good.'
"And you bet your life I tore his order up without sending it in to the house and drew a line through his name on my book, and have never solicited his business since."
"You did him just exactly right," said the necktie man. "While I squared myself with my friend Morris, I was once independent with a customer who cancelled an order on me. He came in to meet me at Kansas City. Two more of the boys were also there then. He placed orders with all of us. His name was Stone. The truth is he came in and brought his wife and boy with him just because he wanted to take a little flyer at our expense. We had written him telling him that we'd pay his expenses if he would come in. He went ahead and took a few hours of our time to place his orders. At the time he did so I merely thought him a good liberal buyer but, as I now look back at the way he bought, he slipped down most too easy to stick.
"Sure enough, in three or four weeks the firm wrote me that Stone had cancelled his order, stating that he believed he had enough goods on hand to run him, that season, but that possibly very late he might reinstate the order.
"The fellow was good so I thought it wouldn't do very much harm to try to get him to take the goods. However, I employed very different tactics from those I used with my friend Morris. I wrote him this way:
"'My dear Brother Stone: I have received a letter from the firm stating that you have cancelled the order which you placed with me in Kansas City. You know not how much I thank you for cancelling this order. It gave me a great deal of pleasure to sell you this bill of goods, and now that you have cancelled it, I want you to be sure and make your cancellation stick because then, sooner than I had really expected, I shall have that same old pleasure over again.
"'It isn't always profit that a man should look for in business. What good does it do him to make a whole lot of money unless he can feel good on the inside? The feel is about all there is in life anyway.
"'Now in future, you go right on as you have in the past, buy your goods from the other fellow. He will not charge you a great deal more for them than I would and your loss will not be very great in that regard; but each time that I come around be sure to take a lot of my time and place an order with me, even if you do cancel it.