down, I continued: 'I can readily see how, at first glance, you were
offended at me; but just think a minute, and I believe you'll tell me
you were hasty.'

"'Yes, I was,' he answered quietly. 'Got your stuff open? I'll go
right down with you.' After Hobson had, in a few minutes, given me a
nice order, he said to me: 'Well, do you know, I like your pluck.'

"It sometimes happens that a traveling man meets with a surly clerk, a
conceited clerk, or a bribed clerk who has become buyer," continued my
friend. "Then the thing to do is to go straight to the head of the
establishment. The man I like to do business with is the man whose
money pays for my goods. He is not pulled out of line by guy ropes. It
is well to stand in with the clerks, but it is better to be on the
right side of the boss. When it gets down to driving nails, he is the
one to hammer on the hardest.

"I once took on the territory of a man who had quit the road. About
this same time one of his best customers had, to some extent, retired
from business activity and put on a new buyer in my department. Now,
this is a risky thing, you know, for a merchant to do unless the buyer
gets an interest in the business and becomes, in truth, a merchant
himself. It usually means the promotion of a clerk who gets a swelled
head. The new buyer generally feels that he must do something to show
his ability and one of the ways he does this is by switching lines.

"During the illness of my predecessor, who soon after quit the road,
another man made for him a part of his old trip. In one of the towns
he made he struck the new buyer and, of course, got turned down. Had I
been there, I would have received the same sort of treatment.