"Exactly," said the salesman, laughing; "which shows these must be good shears. Isn't that so?"
"How much?" asked Larsen.
Well, I need not go any further. We had always bought most of our cutlery from a jobber, feeling that it was best for us under the circumstances. This salesman got us so interested in his cutlery, however, that, really before we knew it, he had our order.
Martin had been unpacking some goods which had just come in and didn't get behind the counter until afternoon. I told him about the selling stunt that we had seen. "That's fine!" he said. "Let us adopt it," and thereupon we decided that on pocket-knives of one dollar and over, and shears of seventy-five cents and over, we should demonstrate their superiority in the same way that the salesman had done.
"Why not on the cheaper ones?" I asked.
"Do you think," replied Martin with a dry smile, "that people would pay extra for the higher priced knives or shears if we demonstrated to them that the lower priced ones would stand the same test of quality? There would be no logical reason for them to pay the extra price, would there?"
A few days after our meeting Jimmie complained that the whole town was using our store as a pencil sharpening emporium. "Everybody is sharpening their pencils all day long, since we put up that notice about the Cincinnati pencil sharpener," he said.
"How many have we sold?" I said, turning to Jones. As a matter of fact I had forgotten our plan.
"There's only one left," he answered.
"Great Scott! Order another dozen right away!" I said excitedly.