Tricks of the trade.
The man who believes that on every traveling man’s
head should rest a dunce cap will some fine day get
badly fooled if he continues to rub up against the
drummer. The road is the biggest college in the
world. Its classrooms are not confined within
a few gray stone buildings with red slate roofs; they
are the nooks and corners of the earth. Its teachers
are not a few half starved silk worms feeding upon
green leaves doled out by philanthropic millionaires,
but live, active men who plant their own mulberry
trees. When a man gets a sheepskin from this
school, he doesn’t need to go scuffling around
for work; he already has a job. Its museum contains,
not a few small specimens of ore, but is the mine
itself.
Let your son take an ante-graduate course of a few
years on the road and he will know to what use to
put his book learning when he gets that. I do
not decry book lore; the midnight incandescent burned
over the classic page is a good thing. I am merely
saying that lots of good copper wire goes to waste,
because too many college “grads” start
their education wrong end first. They do not know
for what they are working. If I were running
a school my way and the object was to teach a boy
method, I’d hand him a sample grip before
I’d give him a volume of Euclid. Last night
a few ideas struck me when I thought my day’s
work was done. I jumped out of bed seven times
in twenty minutes and struck seven matches so I could
see to jot down the points. The man on the road
learns to "do it now." Too many traveling men
waste their months of leisure. Like Thomas Moore,
in their older days they will wail:
“Thus many, like
me, who in youth should have tasted
The fountain that
flows by philosophy’s shrine,
Their time with
the flowers on its margin have wasted
And left their
light urns all as empty as mine.”
Yet many improve their hours of leisure from business;
if they do not, it is their own fault. I met
an old acquaintance on the street yesterday.
“My season is too short,” said he.
“I wish I could find something to do between
trips.” I asked him why he did not write
for newspapers or do a dozen other things that I mentioned.
“I’m incapable,” he replied.
“Well, that isn’t my fault,” said
I. “No,” he answered, "it’s
mine!"
I know one man on the road who found time to learn
the German language. And, by the way, he told
me how it once served him a good turn.
“Once,” said he, “when I was up
in Minnesota, a few years ago, I got a big merchant
to come over and look at my goods. That, you know,
was half of the battle.”
And so it is! When a merchant goes into a drummer’s
sample room, he is on the field of Liao Yang and,
if he doesn’t look out, the drummer will prove
himself the Jap!
