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“My territory was Iowa. In the first town I struck was the meanest merchant I’ve ever met in my life. But I didn’t know it then. He was one of the kind who’d tell you with a grunt that he would not go to your sample room but if you had a few good sellers to bring them over and he’d look at them. The old hog! Then about the time you’d get your stuff over to his store something would have turned up to make him hot and he’d take out his spite on you.

“Well, this old duck said he’d look at my samples of unlined goods. I rather thought that if I could get him started on unlined goods I could sell him on lined stuff and mittens. So I lugged over my whole line myself. I didn’t have sense enough to give the porter a quarter to carry my grip over to his store and save my energy, but, instead, I picked up the old grip myself. It was all right for the first block, but then I had to sit down and rest. The store was four blocks away. On the home stretch I couldn’t go twenty steps before I had to sit down and rest. It was so heavy that it almost pulled the cords in my wrist in two. When I finally landed the grip at the front of the old man’s store, my tongue was hanging out. He had then gone to dinner.

“I thought I wouldn’t eat anything but that I would get my line ready for him by the time he came back, get through with him and take luncheon later. I carried the grip to the back end of the store and spread out my line on the counter. About one o’clock he came in and I said to him, ‘I’m ready for you.’ He walked away and didn’t say a word but took out a newspaper and read for half an hour. He did it for pure meanness, for not a single customer came into the store while he sat there.

“I was beginning to get a little hungry but I didn’t mind that then. When the young lady on the dry goods side came back from dinner I sidled up to her and talked about the weather for another half hour. My stomach was beginning to gnaw but I didn’t dare go out. The old man by this time had gone to his desk and was writing some letters. I waited until I saw him address an envelope and put a stamp on it, and then I braced him a second time.

“‘No, I guess I don’t want any gloves.’

“‘Well, I’ve my goods all here and it’ll be no trouble to show them to you,’ I said.

“‘Nope,’ said he, and then started to write another letter.

“When he finished that one, I said: ‘Now, I don’t like to insist but as my goods are all here it won’t do any harm to look at them.’

“With this the old man turned on me and said:

“‘Looker here, young man, I’ve told you twict that I don’t want to buy any of your goods. Now, you just get them in your grip and get them out of here right quick; if you don’t I’ll throw them out and you with them.’

“Well, the old duffer was a little bigger than I was, and I didn’t want to get into any trouble with him; not that I cared anything about having a scrap with him, but I thought that the firm wouldn’t like it, and if they got onto me they’d fire me. So, without saying a word, I began to pack my goods together.

“About that time a customer came in who wanted to buy a pair of shoes. Some of my samples were still on the counter near the shoe shelves. The old man, with a sweep of his hand, just cleaned the counter of my samples and there I was, picking them up off the floor and putting them into my grip. I felt like hitting him over the head with a nail puller but I buckled up the straps and started sliding the grip along,–it was so infernally heavy–to the front door.