“In the first place, I will ask some gentleman from the audience to select a pen from the box. Any one in the lot will do. They are all exactly alike, so it makes no difference which one you take. Ah, thank you, sir. Now, I will take this pen, place it in this handsome penholder, and then rub the point up and down on this rough, pine board, in this manner, just as you would a stick. That should be a good enough test to convince anyone, but we will not stop at that. I’ll take the little pen and stick it into the board, just as though it was a knife-blade. And not only that. I’ll take the little points of the pen and bend them apart till they have the appearance of just getting over a drunk.
“I know it looks hard to so abuse a little thing like this—but like a careful curator, we’ll just place the points back in their original position like this, stick the little pen in the ink like that, just as though nothing had ever happened to it. There is its work on the paper. You saw it done or you wouldn’t have believed it. Is it not beautiful? The lines are fine enough, and graceful enough, to satisfy the dreams of an artist—‘fair as the sun, clear as the moon, gentlemen, and beautiful as an army with banners.’
“If you want to write cross-eyed, or left-handed, it works just the same; and when it comes to German, French, Spanish, Danish, Irish, Scotch, Latin or Choctaw, the employment is identical. If you wish to come up and try before you buy, you are at perfect liberty to do so.
“I have here, also, a stock of beautiful silver-nickel penholders, that cost you a quarter the world over, and I couldn’t sell them to you at any less. As a special inducement for your patronage, I’ll make this proposition:
“Every man who buys a box of pens, one dozen in a box, gets two of these elegant holders, free, gratis, without cost or consideration. Who is the first man to pass up a quarter?
“Hurry up, gentlemen, I’ve only got about ten more minutes to talk to you before the show begins.” (The wretch was perhaps postponing the beginning of that show until the outer end of eternity, for there was a suspicion in the crowd that he belonged to it, and that nothing would be done in the hall until he ceased talking outside.) “If you came to me after that and offered me fifty dollars for a single pen I wouldn’t sell to you. Live and let live is my motto, and I never would do anything to interfere with another man’s business. It is probably the first, last and only time in your lives that you will have the chance to buy the Automatic, Indestructible, Goldentine Pen at any such figures, and if you go to your jeweler he will charge you a dollar and a half or two dollars for an article not half so good. Where are—ah, yes. Here they come, here they come. Don’t crowd so, my friends, I’ll get around to you all by and by.”
That was the substance of his opening oration, but he had jokes by the dozen and could hold the crowd at will. I am not sure but that the first purchasers were dummies, as the boys who came and broke the ice had a sheepish look; but the ice was fairly broken, and for quite a while he drove a roaring trade.
By the time I had got from under his hypnotic spell, my late companions were a mile or more out of town, and I was once more free to follow my own inclination and devices.
What of that? This time I was not busted, and I saw glimpses of a promising land ahead.
