A Man of Samples. Something about the men he met "On the Road"

by William H. Maher

There it was. The man who wants to sell out is one of the most numerous men that exist. But it was my business then, and it has always been my business since, to listen sympathetically to all such tales, and to promise to have an eye out for any possible purchaser.

“We don't do much in your line,” he continued, “because men don't come to a stove store to buy revolvers, but if I don't sell out I'm going to do some wholesaling, and see if I can't eventually work up into wholesale exclusively.”

This was a much more promising opening for me, and I led his fancy over a bed of roses to the not distant day when he might put up that fraudulent sign—“No goods at retail.” And I was reminded of a very cheap pistol that we had that I would sell him at 52 cents, which he could job to any country dealer at 75 cents. I don't know if it was the beer or my eloquence, but I sold him fifty then and there, and added some other goods to the sale, so that my evening was not wholly wasted.

I saw him not long ago. He is still retailing at the old stand and still grumbling about his partner, but we have been the best of friends since our first evening together.

As I ate my breakfast the next morning I overheard two men at my table talk about trade, and I quietly listened.

“It only takes a little thing to help out a line of goods or to kill them,” said one. “Nimick & Brittan got out that burglar-proof attachment on their locks and just kept themselves going by it.”

“Is Brittan on the road now?”

“Guess not. The Big Three, Brittan, Rashgo, and Bond, work some kind of a syndicate, though, and make a good thing out of it. I met Brittan twenty years ago or so. He was a hard worker, good-natured, understood human nature and was a success. He represented several concerns, and used to make ten or twelve thousand clear a year. Finally he got into the lock factory.”

“Most traveling men are crazy to get into something.”

“Yes; that's so. We think if we had a shebang of our own we'd just make things fly; but we miss it oftener than we hit it when we do get the factory.”