PAGE 6
Canceled Orders
by
“I felt that I’d spent time enough in the town so, after supper, I brought over a bunch of soft hats under my arm, and about nine o’clock he looked at them, picked out a few numbers, and said he had to go to lodge. I boned him about straw hats–I was on my spring trip then.
“‘Look at them to-morrow,’ he grunted.
“I was beginning to get tired of this sort of thing so next morning early I went around to see another man in the town. I’d made up my mind I’d rather take less business from some one else and get it more agreeably; but, to my surprise, I sold this other fellow $1,300, the best order I took on that trip. And easy! I believe he was one of the easiest men I ever did business with; and his credit was A1. He had no objections whatever to my doing business with others in the same town, because he wished his goods put up under his own name rather than with our brands on them, so this really made no interference.
“I finished with him in the morning about 11:30. On going over to my other man’s store I found that he was still in bed. Pretty soon he came in with his before-breakfast grouch. It was afternoon before I got him over to my sample room. Meantime I had gone to sell another man and sold him a bunch of children’s and misses’ goods–such stuff as a clothing house has no use for.
“After I’d taken the dogging of the gruff old codger for a couple of hours–he kicked on everything, the brims being a quarter of an inch too wide or too narrow, and the crowns not shaped exactly right–I finally closed the order and handed him his copy. As he put his hand on the door-knob to go, he cast his eye over a pile of misses’ sailors and growled: ‘Well, who bought them?’
“I told him that I’d sold a little handful of goods to a dry goods store, knowing there would be no interference as he didn’t carry that line of goods.
“‘Well, a man that sells me can’t do business with no other man in this town,’ he grunted, and with this, slammed the door and left me. He didn’t know that I’d sold his competitor a $1,300 bill.
“When I was about half through packing up, the old growler’s clerk, who was a gentlemanly young fellow, came in and said to me, hesitatingly: ‘Old man, I hate to tell you, but the boss told me to come over and say to you not to ship that bill of goods he gave you until he ordered it. He is very unreasonable, you know, and is kicking because you sold some stuff to the dry goods man down the street.’
“‘Thank you, Gus,’ said I to the clerk. I was mad as fire, but not at him, of course. ‘Now, Gus, the old man has sent me a message by you. I’ll let you take one back to him. Now, mind you, you and I are good friends, Gus. Tell him I say he can take his business, including this order, and go with it now and forever clean smack back to–well, you know the rest. Then tell him, Gus, that I’ve sold not only this dry goods man a bill but also his strongest competitor over $1,300 worth of goods. Tell him, furthermore, that I personally appreciate all the favors he has done for me in the past, in a personal way; that I have enjoyed visiting with him; that whenever I come back to this town again in the future, I shall come in to see him; that if I can do him a personal favor in any way, at any time, anywhere, I shall be only too glad to do so, but that, absolutely, our business relationship is at an end.’