that you will make the best of a bad bargain. You are satisfied in
your own mind, and you have told me as plainly as you ever told me
anything in your life, that my goods are better than those that you
have bought. I am going to tell you one thing now that I would not say
in the beginning: that you have bought from a line of samples the
goods of which will not equal the samples you have looked at. It is
not the samples that you buy but it is the goods that are _delivered_
to you. Those which will be delivered will not be as good as those
which you looked at. You know full well that my goods have always come
up to samples. You know that they are reliable. Why do you wish to
change? If you wish to change for the sake of making an additional
twenty-five cents on each hat instead of giving it to my firm, why did
you not take the hat which I have been selling you all the time for
$18 a dozen and sell it for three dollars, the price you have always
been getting for my twenty-four dollars a dozen hats? In that way you
would make an additional twenty-five cents. Be logical! If that's not
profit enough, why not sell a $15 or a $12 a dozen hat for $3? Be
logical! If that's not enough, why not hire a big burly duffer to
stand at your front door, knock down every man who comes in so that
you can take all the money he has without giving him anything. You
could bury him in the cellar. Be logical.'

"''Fraid they'd put me in the "pen",' said Williams.

"'If I were a judge and you were brought before me charged with
selling the twenty-one dollars a dozen hat that you have bought to
take the place of mine (for which I charge you twenty-four dollars a
dozen) I would give you a life sentence. Let me tell you, Williams, a
man who is in business, if he expects to remain in the same place a
long time, must give good values to his customers. In the course of