can't get this old codger to go down to my sample room, I'm not going
to do any business with him at all.'

"When I went into his store I shook hands with him and offered him a
cigar. He said, 'Vell, I vont smoke dis now. I lay it avay.'

"If there is anything on earth that makes me mad it is to offer a
cigar to a merchant or a clerk who, in truth, doesn't smoke, and have
him put it aside and hand it to somebody else after I have left town;
but, you know, you bump into that kind once in a while.

"The old man was back in the office. He shook hands pretty friendly,
and said, 'How's peezness?'

"'Best ever,' said I. It's always a good thing to be cheerful. All
traveling men who go around the country saying that business is poor
ought to be knocked in the head. Even if they are not doing a great
deal, they should at least say, even in the dullest of times, that
business might be a 'lot worse.' It's these croakers on the road who
really make business dull when there is every reason for it to be
good. I never kick and I don't think any up-to-date man will.

"Well, sir, when the old man had asked me how business was and I'd
told him that it was strictly good, I went right square at him. I
said: 'Now, look here, Brother Mondheimer, I have been selling you a
few goods right along and you've told me that they were satisfactory,
but I haven't been doing either myself or you justice. I want you,
this time, to come right down with me and see what a line of goods I
really have. My stuff is strictly swell. The patterns are up-to-date
and I've styles enough to line the whole side of your house. Now,