ball, and we have held our friends there as solid customers. I say
'solid customers' but actually there is no such thing as a 'solid
customer.' The very best friend you have will slip away from you
sometime, break out your corral, and you must mount your broncho,
chase him down and rope him in again."

A mighty true saying, that! It is a great disappointment to call upon
a customer with whom you have been doing business for a long time and
find that he has already bought. Ofttimes this happens, however,
because when you become intimate with a merchant you fail to continue
to impress upon him the merits of your merchandise. However tight a
rope the salesman feels that he has upon a merchant, he should never
cease to let him know and make him feel that the goods he is selling
are strictly right; for if he lets the line slacken a little the
merchant may take a run and snap it in two.

One of my hat friends once told me how he went in to see an old
customer named Williams, down in Texas, and found that he had bought a
bill.

"When I reached home," said he, "I handed my checks to a porter,
slipped half a dollar into his hand and told him to rush my trunks
right up to the sample room."

This is a thing that a salesman should do on general principles. When
he has spent several dollars and many hours to get to a town he should
bear in mind that he is there for business, and that he cannot do
business well unless he has his goods in a sample room. The man who
goes out to work trade with his trunks at the depot does so with only
half a heart. If a man persuades himself that there is no business in