“And when they want some woodwork—and want the best of good work, which is the Curtis kind—or joists or lath or siding, to me they come a’riding—that’s business, do ye mind?”
You never see him slouching, you never see him grouching, or talking of despair; he always keeps things humming, he’s always up a-coming, his hind feet in the air.
SUGGESTION
Some merchants are so all-fired dumb, you wonder how they ever come to sell the stuff they have in store, and keep the sheriff from the door. Old Binkson is a lot that way; he seldom has a word to say. I ask him for a pound of lime; he wraps it up, and all the time, he wears a tragic air of doom, and sheds an atmosphere of gloom. He never chats, he never spiels, nor jumps up high and cracks his heels. He isn’t grouchy or unstrung; he never learned to wag his tongue.
Oh, silence is a golden thing, when ’tisn’t worked too hard, by jing. But none of us will stand up strong for men who gabble all day long, and elocute a thousand miles in fifty-seven varied styles. The dealer who is prone to talk until you hear him round a block, is worse than t’other kind of bird, who’s never known to spring a word.
But if you’ve scantling you would sell, you ought to boost it wisely well, and if a gent should buy a plank, to build himself a dipping tank, you might suggest ere home he speeds, that you have other things he needs.
I called on Lumber Dealer Gaff, to buy a shingle and a half. He put my purchase in a sack, and wrapped a string around and back, and as he toiled, in manner gay, he talked to pass the time away.
“The farmers now, in busy troops, are building stately chicken coops; the winter soon will hit the road, and hens must have a warm abode, or they won’t lay their luscious eggs, but stand around on frozen legs.”
And that recalled the fact to me that I had hens, some ninety-three, and ere I left that lumber store, I bought a wagon load or more, of stuff to build a chicken shed; it’s standing now, all painted red.
And that’s the way big sales are made, and that is how men build up trade. Talk corn cribs at the proper time, or prove a silo is sublime, but in an incidental strain, and not as though you gladly sprain your conscience—which I hope is hale—in eagerness to get the kale.