Did you ever hear of the peddler who sold a load of clocks that would only keep in order twenty-four hours, and hardly that? It seems that his clocks were, like Peter Pindar's razors, made to sell, and not to run. Well, he went a good way off from home, before he offered any of his wares for sale. He found no trouble in selling the clocks, for they were wonderfully cheap; and besides, as he took good care to inform all his customers, each clock was warranted, and on his way homeward he would call at every house where he sold a clock, when he should take pleasure in exchanging all the clocks that did not perform well. Now it turned out that his clocks were not worth a farthing. He sold out the whole load, though—every clock but one. Then he turned about, and commenced his journey homeward, calling upon all his customers, as he had agreed to do.
"Well, how did that are clock run neighbor?"
"Run! it didn't run at all. It stopped as still as a gate post before you had got up Pudding Hill!"
"Did it though, raly?"
"To be sure it did. What on earth did you sell me such a clock for?"
"Well, now, you needn't take on in that style. I'll give you another clock. I told you I would, when I sold it to you."
So the cunning peddler gives his customer the only clock he has left, and takes the one he sold him at first, in place of it. And that is the way the fellow managed all the way home.
There are a great many stories told about peddlers, which, I presume, are not true, and it is sometimes rather difficult to sift the genuine stuff from the chaff. I really don't know how much to believe of the anecdotes of Connecticut peddlers of former times. It is a matter of history, that they sold wooden nutmegs, and horn gun flints, and white-wood cucumber seeds, and white oak hams. But I should not wonder if these stories were made out of whole cloth. The truth is, there have been, first and last, a great many false charges made against "the land of steady habits."
It is a common notion that peddlers are very apt to make dupes of the ladies. Perhaps they are. But I know of one instance in which a peddler got nicely come up with by a lady. I don't believe any man could have done it better. The story is this. A peddler, with a wagon load of tin ware, drove up to the door of a house around which quite a number of children were playing. The mistress of the house made her appearance, and was urged to trade. She had no money, she said. That was no matter, the peddler replied. He would take anything in pay—rags, old clothes, worn out tin, anything. But she hadn't got anything.
"Well," the peddler continued, "I'll take one of your children."