"Up to Bolton is a drug store with a machine for sharpening 'em. It's only eleven miles away. I go there and fix up for them to do it for us. We can get lots of business for it."
Well, I let him do it, and we put a little notice in our window that safety razor blades would be sharpened, and razors honed, in forty-eight hours. We made only ten cents on a dozen blades, but, as Larsen said, and I believed he was right, we were obliging the customers; and even if we didn't make anything out of it it would pay us on account of the good-will we would build up.
Larsen had shocked me very much the same day by saying that he thought we ought to stock shaving soap and talcum powder, and bay rum, and such stuff. I had told him I couldn't stand for a thing like that—we'd have Traglio the druggist down on us.
"Traglio?" replied Larsen. "Say, Boss, you never been mad at him for selling razors? Nor for selling mirrors?"
"Oh, well, we don't sell shaving mirrors."
"Hum. I know we don't, but we oughter. What about him selling shaving brushes? That's a line we got. I think we oughter please customers and not bother about old Traglio."
Finally I had allowed him to buy twenty-five dollars' worth of shaving sundries—in fact, I had told him to look after that stock himself. Well, since then, old Larsen had looked upon his little stock of shaving accessories as if it were an orphan which he had adopted. I thought he spent too much time in pushing the sale of shaving sticks, and bay rum, and witch hazel, but his twenty-five dollars' worth of stock rose to over sixty dollars and we built up quite a nice little sale for it. Strange to say, very little of it was sold in the store; for every Thursday Larsen visited his "trade," as he called it. He went around to his different people once a month. He had about sixty people he called on, all told—an average of fifteen each Thursday afternoon. In three months he had brought to us over twenty charge accounts, and charge accounts with the best people in town, too, through calling on the husband at his place of business, and getting the wife to visit our store.
He would come back with all kinds of strange requests and orders. Once he brought a request that we send a man to repair a broken window sash. We hadn't any one who could do that, so I telephoned to Peter Bender to go down there and repair it and charge it to me. Peter seemed quite tickled to think that I had got him some business. I told Peter that they were charge customers of ours, and that, as they never paid cash, I'd pay him and collect it on my regular bill, which satisfied Peter very well, because he never kept books.
He went down and did the job and turned me in a bill of $2.25. I paid it and charged it to Mr. Sturtevant at the same price. I made nothing out of it, but I surely did please that customer, for Mrs. Sturtevant dropped into the store to make some little purchase and told me about it. She remarked she didn't know we had a carpenter department. I told her I hadn't, but, as she had wanted the job done, I had telephoned Bender to go and do it and charge it up to me.
"Bender charged me $2.25," I said, "and of course I charged you only just that amount, for I don't want to make any profit on little jobs like that. It is merely an accommodation to my customers."