Part 26 (1/2)
”Sure,” said the shoe man. ”Who doesn't know that pompous know-it- all?”
”Well, sir, do you know that fellow isn't satisfied with any one he deals with, and he thinks that this whole country belongs to him. He wrote me several seasons ago to come out to see him. He had heard one of the boys speak well of my line of goods. I went to his town and first thing I did was to open up. Then I went into his store and told him I was all ready.
”'Well, I've decided,' said he, 'that I won't buy anything in your line this season.'
”'You will at least come over and give me a look, in that I have come over at your special request, will you not?”
”'NO, no! No is no with me, sir.'
”I couldn't get him over there. He went into his office and closed the door behind him. I had hard lines in the town that season. I went up to see another man and told him the circ.u.mstances but he said, 'No, I don't play any second fiddle,' and do you know, I didn't blame him a bit.
”I had made up my mind to mark this town off my list, but you know, business often comes to us from places where we least expect it. This is one of the things which make road life interesting. How often it happens that you fully believe before you start out that you are going to do business in certain places and how often your best laid plans 'gang aglee!'
”Another man in this town wrote in to the house (this was last season) for me to come to see him. In his letter he said that he was then clerking for Grain and he was going to quit there and start up on his own hook. Somehow or other the old man got on to the fact that his clerk was going to start up and that he had written in for my line. He was just that mean that he wanted to put as many stones in the path of his old clerk as he possibly could, and I don't know whether it was by accident or design that Grain came in here to Spokane the same day that his old clerk did, or not. At any rate, they were here together.
”Just about the time I had finished selling my bill to Grain's clerk, the old man 'phoned up to my room that he would like to see me. This time he was sweet as sugar. I asked him over the 'phone what he wished. He said, 'I'd like to buy some goods from you. 'Don't care to sell you,' I answered over the wire. His old clerk was right there in the room then and he was good, too. He had got together two or three well-to-do farmers in the neighborhood and had organized a big stock company with the capital stock fully paid up. The whole country had become tired of Grain and his methods, and a new man stood a mighty good chance for success--and you know, boys, what a bully good business he has built up.
”'Why, what's the mater?' 'phoned back the old man.
”'Just simply this: that I have sold another man in your town, and I don't care to place my line with more than one,' I answered. 'Who Is it?' said he. I told him.
”'Well, now, look here,' he came back at me. 'That fellow's just a tidbit. He thinks he's going to cut some ice out there, but he won't last long, and, do you know, if you'll just simply chop his bill off, I'll promise to buy right now twice as much as he has bought from you.'
”If there's a man on the road who is contemptible in the eyes of his fellow traveling men, it is the one who will solicit a countermand; and the merchant who will do this sort of a trick is even worse, you know, boys, in our eyes.
”'What do you take me for?' I 'phoned back.
”I'm very glad to have a chance, sir, to give you a dose of your own medicine. You can't run any such a sandy as this on me,' and I hung up the 'phone on him without giving him the satisfaction of talking it out any further. To be sure, I would not go down stairs to look him up.
”Well, that must have pleased the old man's clerk,” said one of the boys.
”Sure it did. He touched the b.u.t.ton and made me have a two-bit straight cigar on him.”
”You got even with him all right,” said one of my hat friends who was in the party; but let me tell you how a merchant down in Arkansas once fixed me and my house.”
”Old Benzine?” said the shoeman.
”Sure; that's the fellow. How did you hear about it?”
”Well, my house got it the same way yours did.”
”Ah, that fellow was a smooth one,” continued the hat man. ”He had burned out so often that he had been nicknamed Benzine, but still he had plenty of money and though my house knew he was tricky, they let him work them. I didn't know anything about the old man's reputation when I called on him. He had recently come down into Arkansas--this was when I traveled down there--and opened up a new store in one of my old towns. I didn't have a good customer in the town and in shopping about fell in on Benzine.
”He kicked hard about looking at my goods when I asked him to do so.
He knew how to play his game all right. He knew that I would bring all sorts of persuasions to bear upon him to get him started over to my sample room, and just about the time he thought I was going to quit he said, 'Vell, I look but I vont gif you an orter.' Of course that was all I wished for. When a man on the road can get a merchant to say he will look at his goods, he knows that the merchant wishes to buy from somebody in his line and he feels that he has ninety-nine chances in a hundred of selling him.
”That afternoon Old Benzine came over and he was mean. He tore up the stuff and said it was too high priced, and everything of that kind. He haggled over terms and started to walk out several times. He made his bluff good with me and I thought he was 'giltedge.' Finally, though, I sold him about a thousand dollars. The old man had worked me all right. Now he began to put the hooks into the house.
”The same day that my order reached the house came a letter from Benzine stating that he had looked over his copy and he wished they would cut off half of several items on the bill. Ah, he was shrewd, that old guy. He was working for credit. He knew that if he wrote to have part of his order cut off, the credit man would think he was good. My house couldn't s.h.i.+p the bill to him quickly enough, and they wrote asking him to let the whole bill stand. He was shrewd enough to tell them no, that he didn't wish to get any more goods than he could pay for. That sent his stock with the house a sailing. But the old chap wasn't done with them yet.
”About six weeks before the time for discounting he wrote in and said that as his trade had been very good indeed they could s.h.i.+p additional dozens on all the items that he had cut down to half-dozens, and in this way he ran his bill to over $1,300.”