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“‘Besides, here at dis place all de family helps. Even my leetle goil, she goes oud to buy me a cigar von day, and she ask de man dot sells de cigar to buy somet’ing from papa. He vants some boys’ shoes. I haf none. She goes across de streedt and buys a pair und sells dem for a tollar–feefty-five cents brofit. I gif my leetle goil a neeckle and I keep de feefty cents. Dots de vay it goes. I could not do dot eef I leefed on Cap’tol ‘ell.

“‘But den I am a seek man, but I am better off as de man who leefs on Cap’tol ‘ell. He is so beesy. He eats his deener in de store. He has so many trobbles because he vants to make hees fortune beeger. Vat’s de use? Here I am contentet. I go op stairs and notting botters me vile I eat deener. Now, I say vat de Talmud say ees right. Happy ees de man who ees contentet. Eet vould be all righdt eef I vas not a seek man.’

“When he got through with this speech I chewed the rag with him about business for half an hour, as I always had to do, finally telling him, as a last inducement which I always threw out, that I had some lots ‘to close.’ This was the only thing that would make him forget that he was ‘a seek man.’ And when I get right down to it, I believe I get more actual enjoyment out of selling Sam than from any customer I have.”

“Speaking of your man Sam,” said one of the hat men, “reminds me of a customer I once had with the same name. But my Sam was a bluffer. He was one of the kind that was always making kicks that he might get a few dollars rebate. I stood this sort of work for a few seasons but I finally got tired of it and, besides, I learned that the more I gave in to him the more I had to yield. A few years ago when I was traveling in Wisconsin, I went into his store and before he let go of my hand he began: ‘Ah, that last bill was a holy terror. Why doesn’t your house send out good goods? Why, I’ll have to sell all those goods at a loss, and I need them, bad, too. They aint no use of my tryin’ to do no more business with you. I like to give you the business, you know, but I can’t stand the treatment that the house is giving me. They used to send out part of their goods all right, but here lately it is getting so that every item is just rotten.’

“I let Sam finish his kick and, as I started out the door I merely said, ‘All right, Sam, I’ll see you after awhile and fix this up all right. I want to go down and work on my samples a little.’

“As I saw him pass on the other side of the street going home to dinner, I slid up to his store and took all his last shipment from his shelves and stacked them in the middle of the floor. About the time I had finished doing this he came back.

“‘Why, what are you doing?’ said he.

“‘Well, I’ll tell you, Sam. I don’t want you to have anything in the house that doesn’t suit you, and I would a great deal rather than you would fire all this stuff back to the house. Look up and see the amount of freight charges you paid on them. Meantime I’ll run down to the hotel and get my book and make you out a check for whatever it comes to. Come on down to the corner with me anyway, Sam. Let’s have a cigar and take the world easy. I’m not going out tonight.’

“Sam went down to the corner with me. In a few minutes I returned to the store with my check book in hand. As I went into his store Sam was putting my goods back on the shelves.

“‘Got your samples open?’ he said.

“‘Sure, Sam,’ said I. ‘Did you suppose I was going to let you bluff me this way?’ And that was the last time he ever tried to work the rebate racket on me.”

“So long as a bluffer is warm about it,” said the shoe man, “it’s all right; but I do hate to go up against one of those cold bloods, even if he isn’t a bluffer.”

“That depends,” said the clothing man. “There’s one man I used to call on and every time I went to see him I felt like feeling of his pulse to see if it were beating. If I had taken hold of his wrist I would not have been surprised to find that the artery was filled with fine ice. Gee! but how he froze me. Somehow I could always get him to listen to me, but I could never get him to buy.

“One day, to my surprise, the minute I struck him he said, ‘Samples open?’ And when I told him ‘Yes’ he had his man in my department turn over a customer that he was waiting on, to another one of the boys, and took him right down to the sample room. I never sold an easier bill in my life, so you see a cold blood is all right if he freezes out the other fellow.”

The goose that had twirled so long before the pine log blaze was now put before us. The Spanish Senor with his violin started the program, and our tales for the evening were at an end.