especially to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods
from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold
him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them.
It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were
worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right
through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on
the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a
bluffer is with a bluff. This man had laid out a line of goods which
he fully intended, I know now, to buy from me at the prices which I
had first asked him for them, but he thought he would buy them cheaper
from me if he could.

"Many a time after that, when I had got onto things better, has this
old Irishman laughed at me about how he worked me into giving him a
bill of goods, and enjoyed the joke of it--Irishmanlike--more, I
believe, than he did getting the bill at low prices.

"Well, my nerve was gone and I thought the only way I could do
business then was by cutting the stuffing out of prices. I kept it up
for a few days--until I received my next mail at Omaha. Whew! how the
old man did pour it into me. He wrote me the meanest letter that a
white man ever got. He said: 'Jim, you can go out and play all the
poker that you want to, but don't cut the life out of goods. You can
lose a hundred and fifty dollars once in a while, if you want to,
playing cards, that will be a whole lot better than losing a hundred
and fifty every day by not getting as much as goods are worth. Now
we're going to forget about the hundred and fifty dollars you lost
gambling, instead of charging it to your salary account, as you told
us to do. We had made up our minds because you were starting out so
well and were keeping up prices, to charge this hundred and fifty