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“‘What sort of terms are you going to give me–the same I had last year?’

“‘No, sir; I will not,’ said I. ‘I’m not going to do business with you that way.’

“‘Well, if you’ve done it once, why don’t you do it again? Other people do it right along, and your house is still in business. They haven’t gone broke.’

“‘Yes, you bet your life they’re still in business!’ said I, ‘and they’d make a whole lot more money than they do now if they’d do business on the terms that you ask. Do you know what I did? You wouldn’t let me have things my way and be square with you, so I skinned you on that little express order out of just ninety cents, and did it just to teach you a lesson!’ I said, planking down a dollar. ‘I don’t want to trim you too close to the bone.’

“‘Well,’ said he, after I’d figured out and shown him the difference between 50 off straight and 40-10-5, ‘This dollar doesn’t belong to me. Come on, let’s spend it.'”

“That’s pretty good,” chimed in the shoe man, who was sitting on a camp stool. The smoking compartment was full. “But it was dangerous play, don’t you think? Suppose he’d done that figuring before you’d got around and shown him voluntarily that you skinned him and why. I know one of my customers, at any rate, who would have turned you down for good on this sort of a deal. He is a fair, square, frank man–most merchants, I find, are that way anyhow.”

“Yes; you’re right,” said John.

“I got at the man I speak of this way,” said the shoe man. “I had called on him many times. He was such a thoroughbred gentleman and treated me so courteously that I could never press matters upon him. There are merchants, you know, of this kind. I’d really rather have a man spar me with bare ‘knucks’ than with eight-ounce pillows. This gives you a better chance to land a knock-out blow. But there is a way of getting at every merchant in the world. The thing to do is to find the way.

“As I stood talking to this gentleman–it was out in Seattle–in came a Salvation Army girl selling ‘The War Cry.’ When she came around where I was, my merchant friend gave her a quarter for one, and told her to keep the change. Do you know, I sized him up from that. It showed me just as plain as day that he was kind hearted and it struck me, quick as a flash, that my play was generosity. People somehow who are free at heart admire this trait in others. When a man has once been liberal and knows what a good feeling it gives him on the inside, to do a good turn for some poor devil that needs it, he will always keep it up, and he has a soft spot in his heart for the man who will dig up for charity.

“I didn’t plank down my money with any attempt to make a show, but I simply slipped a dollar into the Salvation Army Captain’s hand, and said, ‘Sister, the War Cry is worth that much to me. I always read it and I’m really very glad you brought this copy around to me.’

“Now, this wasn’t altogether play, boys, you know. If there is any one in the world who is a true and literal Christian, it is the girl who wears the Salvation Army bonnet. And to just give your money isn’t always the thing. A little kind word to go along with it multiplies the gift.

“After a while, when I got around to it–I talked with the merchant for some time about various things–I said, as politely as I could: ‘Now, you know your affairs a great deal better than I do myself, but it is barely possible that I might have something in my line that would interest you. My house is old established and they do business in a straightforward manner. If you can spare the time, I should be very glad indeed to have you see what I am carrying. I assure you that I shall not bore you in the sample room. I never do this because I don’t like to have any one feel I’m attempting to know more of his affairs than he does.’