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“I went back to the hotel. After luncheon I sent out my advance cards and took up a book. My mind was perfectly easy, because I knew just exactly what was going to happen.

“At a quarter to six, Abie, Alex’s boy, disturbed me while I was in the middle of a chapter and said: ‘Papa wants to see you right away. The store closes at six.’

“I knew that meant business, but I said to Abie: ‘Tell your papa if he’ll excuse me I’ll not come over. Won’t you please say goodbye to him for me? And won’t you, Abie, like a good boy–bring me a bundle I left on the show case. It has a red cloth around it.’

“Finishing my chapter, I started slowly toward Alex’s store. I met Abie. But he didn’t have the red bundle–I knew he wouldn’t.

“‘Papa says, come over. He wants to see you,’ said Abie.

“As I went into the store a minute before six, Alex was pacing up and down the floor. My samples were spread upon the show case.

“‘Eff you vant your samples, dake ’em avay yourself. Do you subbose I raice poys to vait on draveling men?’ said Alex. He was keeping up his bluff well.

“With this I began to stack together my samples.

“‘Vait! Vait!’ said Alex, ‘Aind you choing to gif a man a jance to puy some choots?’

“‘Sure,’ said I, ‘if you want to, but I thought you were going to wait until you went into market.’

“‘Vell, you vas a taisy,’ said Alex; and in three minutes–he was the quickest buyer I ever saw–I booked an order for six hundred dollars.

“‘Now, I see,’ said Alex, as he shook hands and started home, ‘Vot you vanted mit dot udder cart.'”

Strategy will win out in business, but not deception. The traveling man who wishes to win in the race of commerce, if he plays sharp tricks, will get left at the quarter post. It is rather hard, sometimes, to keep from plucking apples that grow in the garden of deception, especially if they hang over the fence. I sat one night beside one of the boys who was sending out his advance cards. He was making his first trip over a new territory.

“Blast it!” said he, tearing up a card he had written.

“Don’t swear, or you’ll not catch any fish,” said I.

“Yes, but I did such a fool thing. I addressed a card to a merchant and then turned it over and signed his name–not mine–to it. Wasn’t that a fool thing to do?”

“No, not at all,” I replied, laughing. “If you had sent that card to him, he would have read it. Otherwise, he will chuck the one you do send into the basket.”

“Bright idea!” quoth my friend.

A few months afterward I met this same man. “Say,” said he, “that was a straight tip you gave me on that advance card scheme. It worked like a charm. Half of the men I went to see had kept the cards on their desks and I had no trouble getting their ears. Some were expecting a long lost relative. When they showed me my cards with their names on them I was always amazed at such a queer mistake. There was one exception. I told one man why I did it, and he nearly threw me out of his store.”

When I was told this I felt ashamed to think I had taught duplicity to an innocent. I did not know to what it might lead him.

Stolen fruits may look like they are sweet, but taste them, and they are bitter. I knew a man who sold shoes in the State of Washington. He was shrewd and sharp. He learned of an old Englishman who, although his store was in an out of the way town, did a large business. The shoeman wrote half a dozen letters to himself care of the old Englishman, addressing them as “Lord” So and So. When he reached the town the Englishman most graciously handed him the letters, and to all questions of the shoeman, who commanded a good British accent, answered, “Yes, my lord,” or “No, my lord.”