“Say, young fellow, I’ll give you an even hundred dollars for that organ. What do you say?”
Of course, I hesitated and talked a lot, but finally gave in. The organ stood us, counting freight charges and all, an even eighty dollars.
The greatest objection I had to handling musical instruments was that the work was not sufficiently “rapid and devilish.” I think I rather preferred to handle organs, because I made more sales, even if the profits were so much less on three or four of them than on one piano. A hundred dollars coming at the end of three or four weeks was not as enticing as less money, coming by closer installments.
It was a money-maker for me, but I eventually grew tired of the business. There was too much hard work in handling those large, heavy organs, and besides the disadvantage of traveling in all kinds of weather and putting up with inferior accommodations in farm houses, made it more than unpleasant. I drove into town one day determined at least to take a little lay-off and figure on something that would be more to my liking—perhaps go back to street selling again.
It generally happened that when I quit one thing another showed up right at my hands. Probably it was because I was looking for it.
Quite accidentally I came across a canvasser. He actually tried to obtain my subscription to that, at one time, highly popular journal, The Weekly Rooster, and if I had not been too much in the same line myself I think he might have made it.
We had quite a talk about the paper, from his point of view, and I decided to try my hand at it, for a time at least.
I found more trouble in making arrangements than I had anticipated. I would have to be trusted to handle quite an amount of money, and the firm required a bond or strong references.
I had no references nor bondsmen whom I cared to give, but I ultimately arranged by putting up a cash deposit, and after quite a lengthy correspondence, during which I was several times tempted to throw up my hands, I secured sample copies and a certified subscription book and went to work.
The “Rooster” was a twenty page illustrated paper, the subscription price being six dollars, in advance, per year. As special inducements, fifty-two paper back novels—one with each issue of the paper—were offered, and a set of six cloth bound volumes. If preferred, however, they took installments of fifty cents per month, and that was the liberal proposition I principally worked on. Very little trickery was necessary to obtain orders.