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 circumstances. 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.”
Social arts as salesmen’s
assets.
Salesmanship 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 constitutional 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.
