"I shall never forget my first experience," said my old friend Jim, as
we all lighted fresh cigars--having forgotten the Dutch pictures and
the black oak furnishings.

"I had made a little flyer for the house to pick up a bill of opening
stock out in Iowa. They all thought in the office that the bill wasn't
worth going after, so they sent me; but I landed a twenty-five hundred
dollar order without slashing an item, a thing no other salesman up to
that time had ever done, so the old man called me in the office and
gave me a job just as soon as I came back.

"I started out with two hundred dollars expense money. The roll of
greenbacks the cashier handed me looked as big as a bale of hay. I
made a couple of towns the first two days and did business in both of
them, keeping up the old lick of not cutting a price.

"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the
main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go
to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out
around the hotel at Grand Island. That was the time when there were a
lot of poker sharks on the road. When I was a bill clerk in Chicago I
used to meet with some of the other boys from the store on Saturday
nights, play penny ante, five-cent limit, and settle for twenty-five
cents on the dollar when we got through--I was with a clothing firm,
you know. I had always been rather lucky and I had it in my head that
I could buck up against anybody in a poker game. I had no trouble
finding company to sit in with. In fact, they looked me up. In those
days there were plenty of glass bowls full of water setting 'round for
suckers. My train didn't leave until Monday morning and I had to
Sunday at Grand Island.