Part 3 (1/2)

I had also failed to take Mason's address. After he made me the loan in Spokane we sat on the train together chatting. I became well acquainted with him, and with a friend of his named d.i.c.key, who was along with us. Yet I did not ask Mason his business, even; for, as you know, it's only the fresh, new man who wants to know what every man he meets is selling.

After McPherson's new cas.h.i.+er had told me that he had not paid my order, I inquired of every man I met about Mason, but could get no clew on him. He was in a specialty jewelry business and made only a few large towns in my territory. Every time I boarded a train I would look all through it for those sandy whiskers. It was lucky that he wore that color; it made the search easy. I even looked for him after midnight--not only going through the day coaches, but asking the Pullman porters if such a man was aboard. I woke up more than one red- whiskered man out of his slumbers and asked him: ”Is your name Mason?”

One of them wanted to lick me for bothering him, but he laughed so loudly when, in apologizing, I told him the reason for my search that he woke up the whole car. I never found him this way, and not having his address, I could only wait.

I had just about given up all hopes of getting a line on my confiding friend when, several weeks after a letter bearing the pen marks of many forwardings, caught me. I've got that letter; it reads this way:

”Walla Walla, Dec. 6th.

”My Dear Sir:

”I called on Mr. McPherson today and unfortunately found him out of the city. None of his clerks seemed to know you when I presented your request for an advance. They all began to look askance at me as if I were a suspicious character. I ought to have put on my white necktie and clerical look before going in, but unluckily I wore only my common, everyday, drummer appearance.

”I got your address from a fellow wayfarer here just minute ago. My train goes soon. I am writing you care of your house as I'm a little leery of sending it care of your friend McPherson.

”Your order for the four now reposes in the inside pocket of my vest amongst my firm's cash and will stand as an I. O. U. against me until I hear from you. Even as I write, my friend d.i.c.key, who sits at my left, keeps singing into my ear:

”'If I should die tonight and you should come to my cold corpse and say:

”'”Here, Bill, I've brought you back that four,”

”'”I'd rise up in my white cravat and say: ”What's that?” And then fall dead once more.'

”Beseechingly yours,

”W. L. Mason, ”Denver, Box --.”

Although I sent Mason a check, it seemed that I was ever doomed to be in error with him. I wrote him insisting that he wear a new hat on me and asked him to send me his size.

He wrote back that he was satisfied to get the four dollars; but, since I pressed the matter, his size was seven and one-fourth.

I wrote my hatter to express a clear beaver to Mason. But somehow he got the size wrong, for Mason wrote back:

”Dear Brother: Everything that I have to do with you seems at first all wrong, but finally wiggles out all right. For example, while I stated that my size was seven and one-fourth your hatter sent a seven and one-half--two sizes too big under ordinary circ.u.mstances. But I was so tickled to get the unexpected four and a new lid besides that my head swelled and my bonnet fit me to a T.”

CHAPTER III.

SOCIAL ARTS AS SALESMEN'S a.s.sETS.

Salesmans.h.i.+p has already been defined as the art of overcoming obstacles, of turning defeat into victory by the use of tact and patience. Courtesy must become const.i.tutional with the drummer and diplomacy must become second nature to him. All this may have a very commercial and politic ring, but its logic is beyond question. It would be a decided mistake, however, to conclude that the business life of the skilful salesman is ruled only by selfish, sordid or politic motives.

In the early nineties, I was going through Western Kansas; it was the year of the drought and the panic. Just as the conductor called ”All aboard” at a little station where we had stopped for water, up drove one of the boys. His pair of bronchos fairly dripped with sweat; their sides heaved like bellows--they had just come in from a long, hard drive. As the train started the commercial tourist slung his grips before him and jumped on. He shook a cloud of dust out of his linen coat, brushed dust off his shoes, fingered dust out of his hair, and washed dust off his face. He was the most dust-begrimed mortal I ever saw. His ablutions made, he sat down in a double seat with me and offered me a cigar.

”Close call,” said I.

”Yes, you bet--sixteen miles in an hour and thirty-five minutes. That was the last time I'll ever make that drive.”

”Customer quit you?”

”He hasn't exactly quit me, he has quit his town. All there ever has been in his town was a post office and a store, all in one building; and he lived in the back end of that. It has never paid me to go to see him, but he was one of those loyal customers who gave me all he could and gave it without kicking. He gave me the glad hand--and that, you know, goes a long ways--and for six years I've been going to see him twice a year, more to accommodate him than for profit. The boys all do lots of this work--more than merchants give them credit for.

His wife was a fine little woman. Whenever my advance card came--she attended to the post office--she would always put a couple of chickens in a separate coop and fatten them on breakfast food until I arrived.

Her dinner was worth driving sixteen miles for if I didn't sell a sou.