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“After monkeying around a couple of hours, I managed to get laid out a pretty fair line of stuff. ‘Now,’ said the buyer, ‘to-night I can only make up a list of what’s here. These things suit me pretty well, and in the morning I can submit it to the old man for his O.K.’

“Well, that looked easy to me so we wrote down the order, and when we got through, that fellow was bold enough to come right out and say, ‘Now, look here, you’re making a pretty good commission on this stuff –here’s a good bill, and I can throw it to you if I wish, or I can kill it if I like. I’m not getting any too much over where I am, so don’t you think your house can dig up about twenty for me on this bill, and I’ll see that it sticks?'”

“Did you dig?” said one of the boys.

“Dig? You bet your life not. This funny business, I won’t do. It may work for one bill but it won’t last long because it is only a matter of time before the buyer who will be bribed will be jumped and lose his job. I simply told the fellow that I didn’t do that sort of business; that unless he wished to do business with me strictly on the square, I wouldn’t do business with him at all.”

“Well, what did he say to this?” said I.

“Oh, he said to me, ‘I’m just joshing with you and I really wanted to see if I couldn’t get you down a little and make that much more for the house. I like to do business myself with any one who is on the square.'” “The order stuck then?” asked the wall paper man.

“No, it didn’t. That’s the worst of it. A few days after I reached home in came a cancellation from the head of the house. At that time, I didn’t understand it. I supposed that the head of the house himself had really canceled the order, so the next time I went to that town, I waltzed straight up to the office and asked to see the head of the establishment. I asked him why he had canceled my order and he told me that his buyer really had all of that in charge and that he only followed out his recommendations; that the buyer had told him to cancel that bill and he had done so.

“I saw through the whole scheme. There was just one thing for me to do. I simply came right square out and told the old man that his buyer had wanted to get $20.00 from me to make the bill stick; and I bet him a hundred that the clerk had canceled my order so that he could get a rake-off from somebody else.

“The old man sent for the buyer and told him to get his pay and leave. He thanked me for putting him wise and from that time on, he or some other member of the firm always goes to the sample room.”

Now, it must not be thought that every sale that is made must be put through by some bright turn. These stories I have told about getting the merchant’s attention are the extreme cases. The general on the field of battle ofttimes must order a flank movement, or a spirited cavalry dash; but he wins his battle by following a well-thought-out plan. So with the salesman. He must rely, in the main, upon good, quiet, steady, well-planned work. Some merchants compel a man to use extraordinary means to catch them at the start. And the all-around salesman will be able to meet such an emergency right at the moment, and in an original way that will win.