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“‘Just now I am not able to dig up all that I owe but here is my check for a hundred. Now, I want to keep out of the hole after this so you had better cut down the order I gave your man about a half. After all, the best friend that a man has is himself, and hereafter I am going to try a little harder to look after Number One.

“Yours truly,
“‘____'”

“Another thing that makes it hard for us,” said the furnishing man, “is to have the credit man so infernally long in deciding about a shipment, holding off and holding off, brooding and brooding, waiting and waiting, and wondering and wondering whether they shall ship or whether they shall not, and finally getting the notion to send the goods just about the time a man countermands his order. A countermand, you know, is always a pusher and I would advise any merchant who really wants to get goods, to place an order and then immediately countermand it. Whenever he does this the credit man will invariably beg him to take the stuff. Oh, they’re a great lot, these credit men.

“I know I once sold a man who, while he was stretching his capital to the limit pretty far, was doing a good business and he wanted some red, white, and blue neckties for Fourth of July trade. I had sold him the bill in the early part of May. About the 2Oth of June, I received a letter from the credit man asking me to write him further information about my man. Well, I gave it to him. I sent him a telegram that read like this: ‘Ship this man today by express sure. Heavens alive, he is good. You ought to make credits for a coffin house for a while.'”

“The credit man is usually bullet-headed about allowances for another thing,” said the shoe man. His kind will fuss around about making little allowances of a couple of dollars that come out of the house and never stop to think we often spend that much on sundries twice over every day. I had a man a great while ago to whom I had sold a case of shoes that were not at all satisfactory. I could see that they were not when I called upon him and I simply told him right out, ‘Look here, Mark, this stuff isn’t right. Now, I wish to square it. What will make this right?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I don’t think these shoes are worth within two dollars a dozen of what you charged me.’ ‘No, they’re not worth within three dollars,’ said I. ‘I will just give you a credit bill for three dollars and call it square.’ It was nothing more than right because the stuff was bum.

“I came into the house soon after this and, passing the credit memo, into the office, the credit man howled as if I were pulling his jaw tooth. It hurt him to see that little three dollars go on the profit and loss account. ‘Well, I won’t insist upon it,’ said I. ‘I will just ask the man to return the goods.’ ‘All right,’ he said.

“When I wrote out to my man, I told him the truth about the matter,– that the house had howled a little because I had made the credit allowance, and to just simply fire the stuff right back, but not to forget to ask that he be credited with the amount of freight which he had already paid on the case of shoes. It was just a small item, but what do you think the credit man said when I showed him my customer’s letter, asking for the freight?’

“He said, ‘Well, that fellow’s mighty small.'”

“I have never had any of these troubles that you boys are talking about,” said the hat man.