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“When I got through with ‘Old Sorgum’ I had several hours left before my train went west. Did I pack up and quit? Bet your life not! I didn’t have sense enough then, I suppose, to know that I had placed my goods in about as many stores as I ought to. I then did the ‘bundle act.’

“I did up a bunch of stuff in a cloth and went down the street with the samples under my arm. I did have sense enough, though, to tuck them under my coat as I passed by the store of the man I had sold. I didn’t know, then, of the business jealousy–which is folly, you know –there is between merchants; but I felt a little guilty just the same.

The only thing I sold, however, was a dozen dog-skin gloves to the big clothing merchant on the corner. That night I took the two o’clock train out of town and had my first experience of sleeping in two beds in two towns in one night–but this, in those days, was fun for me.

“Do you know, I had a bully good week? I was out early that season, ahead of the bunch. By Saturday afternoon I had worked as far west as Wymore. I went up to see a man there on Saturday afternoon. He said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ Well, there I was! I had been raised to respect the Sabbath and between the time that he said he would see me in the morning and the time that I said all right–which was about a jiffy–I figured out that it would be better to succeed doing business on Sunday than to fail by being too offensively good. For a stranger in a strange place work is apt to be less mischievous than idling, even on the Sabbath Day.

“Heavens! how I worked those days! After I had made the appointment for Sunday morning I went back to the hotel and threw my stuff into my trunks quickly–by this time I had learned that to handle samples in a hurry is one of the necessary arts of the road–and took a train to a little nearby town which I could double into without losing any time. I even had the nerve to drag a man over to my sample room after he had closed up on Saturday night! I didn’t sell him anything that time, but afterwards he became one of my best customers. It pays to keep hustling, you know.

“Whew! how cold it was that night. The train west left at 3 a.m. Heavens! how cold my room was. A hardware man had never even slept in it, to say nothing of its ever having known a stove. The windows had whiskers on them long as a billy goat’s; the mattress was one of those thin boys. I hadn’t then learned that the cold can come through the mattress under you just about as fast as it can through the quilts on top. I hadn’t got onto the lamp chimney trick.”

“Why, what’s that?” spoke up one of the boys.

“Aren’t you onto that?” said Billy. “You can take a lamp chimney, wrap it up in a towel and put it at your feet and it will make your whole bed as warm as toast.

“Well, I went back to Wymore the next morning and sold my man. I cut the stuffing out of prices because I had been told that the firm he bought from was the best going, and I remembered the advice that my old friend had given me: ‘It’s better, Billy, to be cussed for selling goods cheap than to be fired for not selling them at all.’ Of course I don’t agree with this now, but I slashed that bill just the same.

“Next morning, when I reached Beatrice, the first thing I saw in the old hotel (I still recall that dead, musty smell) was a church directory hanging on the wall. In the center of the directory were printed these words: