When we came to a crossroad he would say “Straight ahead” or “Turn to the right” to the driver and then tell us something of interest about his work in the New York Store. It seemed he was a very popular clerk; so popular, indeed, that the proprietor of the Boston Store, the principal opposition, had long wanted him.
“But I said to him frankly,” Joe Ward explained, “if you get me you’ll have to pay a man’s wages. I’m no cheap skate. I was born over on Cow Creek and no citizen of that neighbourhood would think of going to Centerville without trading with me.”
“Here,” I thought, “is a very high-priced man.”
I began wondering how much would induce him to leave the New York Store. And he proceeded to tell us—he couldn’t keep a secret.
“Besides the pull I have on Cow Creek, my grandfather is the leading farmer out the Fairview way and everybody knows I control the best trade round Fairview. So I says to Persinger, of the Boston Store: ‘If you get me you’ll get the best, but you’ll have to pay me. I’m human like everybody else; if you pay me I’ll work for you and do you all the good I can, but we might as well understand each other first as last—if you get me you’ll have to pay me. I’m no amateur. If you get me you’ll have to pay me twelve dollars a week.’”
But it developed before we reached the next town that Persinger, of the opposition store, wouldn’t stand an innovation like that, so Joe Ward got out at Fairview and said he was going back next morning to resume his work at the New York Store.
DOC ROBINSON
I have noticed that the people take as much delight in praising a worthless man as they take in abusing a respectable one. People say Doc Robinson, the town drunkard, was once a noted surgeon in London; that he was engaged to a beautiful young lady of New York, but gave her up because his parents objected, and thus went to the dogs; that he has the best education of any man in town; that he is a man of fine intellect; that he is a younger son of a titled family in England, and that when his brother dies he will become a duke.