The following spring I started on the road with my team hitched tandem to a two-wheeled cart with my advertisement on the side and back.
A few weeks later I hired a Mr. Rhodes to travel for me, and he took charge of the tandem team and traveled with them. They made a splendid advertisement for my business and it was looked upon by our customers as quite a novel way to travel.
I now remained at home and had my hands full looking after the failures that were coming thick and fast. It seemed to me that every other man who failed was owing me.
Dr. Frank was still with me and rendered very valuable service in the collection of hard accounts. He had not entirely gotten over his pugilistic propensities, and whenever I found it necessary to instruct him to call on a dead beat and "bring something back with him," he generally returned with a wad of money or a wad of hair.
About this time I had a little experience myself, at a town in Ohio, which might be worth mentioning. One of my customers, a retail jeweler, was owing me over eleven hundred dollars. As we could get no word from him in answer to our request for a remittance, we made a draft on him, and were informed by the banker that the firm had "gone up" three or four weeks before; also that the store was being run by a man who had bought it at sheriff's sale to satisfy a chattel mortgage. Only two months before, I had received a statement from the proprietor, who claimed that the stock was free from incumbrance, and everything in good shape. So I concluded that an open swindle had been perpetrated.
I took the train for the town where he was doing business, and on my arrival learned that the other creditors had been there ahead of me, and not one had succeeded in getting the least satisfaction. I visited the store, and could not see a single article in the show-cases that I could identify as goods I had sold him. This alone convinced me more than ever that I had been swindled completely out of my goods.
I instituted a vigorous search for a clew of some kind which might lead to their discovery, but without success; and was just about to leave town when I inquired if the late jewelry firm had employed any clerks or errand boys before collapsing.
Upon learning that they had employed a small boy then residing with the ex-manager, and realizing that my chances for getting information from that quarter would be pretty slim, I inquired if the lad had any relatives living there. The hotel clerk told me that his father and sister were living but a short distance away, and pointed out the house to me. I called at once, but with not an inkling of an idea of what I would say or do when I should be admitted; and trusting implicitly to the inspiration of the moment.
When I rapped at the door, it was opened by a tall, lank, angular and cadaverous-looking young woman of about eighteen, who by the way was big enough to peddle grind-stones.
I was surprised to learn that she was a sister of the lad referred to, as I had gotten the impression that she was much younger.