I sold a bill of goods that pleased me, I believe, more than any other
order that I ever took. I was over in the mining district of Michigan.
That's a pretty wide open country, you know. My old customer had quit
the town. He couldn't make a 'stick' of it somehow. I had been selling
him exclusively for so long that I thought I was queered with every
other merchant in the town. But the season after my customer Hodges
left there, much to my surprise, two men wrote into the house saying
they would like to buy my goods. My stuff had always given Hodges'
customers satisfaction. After he left, his old customers drifted into
other stores and asked for my brand. Now, if you can only get a
merchant's customers to asking for a certain brand of goods, you
aren't going to have trouble in doing business with him. This is where
the wholesale firm that sells reliable merchandise wins out over the
one that does a cut-throat business. Good stuff satisfies and it
builds business.

"Well, when I went into this town I thought I would have easy sailing
but I felt a little taken back when I walked down the street and sized
up the stores of the merchants who wished to buy my goods. They both
looked to me like tid bits. Both of them were new in the town, one of
them having moved into Hodges' old stand. I said to myself that I
didn't wish to do business with either one of these pikers. 'I'll see
if I can't go over and square myself with Andrews, the biggest man in
town,' I said. 'While I've never tried to do business with him, he
can't have anything against me. I've always gone over and been a good
fellow with him, so I'll see if I can't get him lined up.'

"Three or four more of the boys had come in with me on the same train.
When I went into Andrews' store, two of them were in there. Pretty
soon afterwards I heard one of them say: 'Well, Andy, as you want to