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“You bet,” said I, “the stock boy has a chance if he only knows it.”

“Yes,” answered my friend, “sure he has. My mother put in my trunk when I left home a Sunday School card on which were the words: ‘Thy God seeth thee, my son.’ Without irreverence I would advise every stock boy who wants to get on the road to write these words and keep them before him every day: ‘The eyes of the old man are upon me.'”

I once heard one of the very successful clothing salesmen of Chicago tell how he got on the road.

“I had been drudging along in the office making out bills for more than a year, at ten a week,” said he. “My father traveled for the firm but he never would do anything to get me started on the road. He thought I would fall down. I was simply crazy to go. I had seen the salesmen get down late, sit around like gentlemen, josh the bosses, smoke good cigars and come and go when they pleased for eight months in the year. This looked better to me than slaving away making out bills from half past seven in the morning until half past six at night, going out at noon hungry as a hound and having to climb a ladder after a ham sandwich, a glass of milk and a piece of apple pie.

“I had kept myself pretty well togged up and, as my father wouldn’t do anything to get me started, I made up my mind to go straight to the boss myself. He was a little fat sawed-off. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and whenever he was interested in anybody, he would look at him over his specs. He did not know much about the English language, but he had a whole lot more good common sense than I gave him credit for then. It never hurts a boy in the house, you know, who wants to go on the road to go square up and say so. He may get a turn-down, but the boss will like his spunk, and he stands a better show this way than if he dodges back and waits always for the boss to come to him. Many a boy gets out by striking the ‘Old Man’ to go out. If the boy puts up a good talk to him the old man will say: ‘He came at me pretty well. By Jove, he can approach merchants, and we will give him a chance.’

“One day, pretty soon after I had braced the old man to send me out, a merchant in Iowa wrote in that he wanted to buy a bill of clothing. They looked him up in Dun’s and found that he was in the grocery business. My father didn’t wish to go out–the town was in his territory. I overheard the old man in the office say to him: ‘Let’s send Chim.’

“Well, Jim started that night. They told me to take a sleeper, but I sat up all night to save the two dollars. I didn’t save much money, though, because in the middle of the night I got hungry and filled up on peanuts and train bananas. The town was up on a branch and I didn’t get there until six o’clock the next day. When I reached there, I went right up to my man’s store. You ought to have seen his place! The town was about seven hundred, and the store just about evened up with it– groceries and hardware. I got a whiff from a barrel of sauer kraut as I went in the door; on the counter was a cheese case; frying pans and lanterns hung down on hooks from the ceiling; two farmers sat near the stove eating sardines and crackers. No clothing was in sight and I said to myself: ‘Well, I’m up against it; this man can’t buy much; he hasn’t any place to put it if he does.’ But I’ve since learned one thing: You never know who is going to buy goods and how many on the road must learn that the man who has nothing in his line is the very man who can and will buy the most, sometimes, because he hasn’t any. And besides, the little man may be just in the notion of spreading himself.