feel that he must have some. Seven-eighths of the goods sold are sold
in this way. Very few men do business on their own judgment. Their
competitors make their prices, select their styles, and force them to
carry certain stock. The drummer's best card is always: This is
selling like fire; Smith took a gross, Brown half a gross, Jones three
dozen, and you will miss it if you do not try a few. Such dealers
always have the larger part of their capital locked up in goods they
bought because others had bought the same goods.

I repeated my price to Tucker, and he told me to send him a few. "By
the way," said he, "what are your terms?"

"Sixty days."

"Does your house draw the day a bill falls due?"

"No; the house is slow about drawing upon customers, and they always
give ten days' notice before making draft."

"Well, I don't like to be drawn on. The house that draws on me can't
sell me again. I can't draw on my trade, and I'm devilish glad to get
my money in six months, but you fellows in the city expect a man to
come to the exact minute. I don't want any drawing on me."

It was an excellent place to have delivered a lecture on the beauties
of prompt payments. I could have told Brother Tucker that if he did
not see his way clear to pay his bill when due he should not buy it,
and if his customers did not pay promptly he should dun them harder or
keep his goods. But the traveling man is not sent out to inculcate
business morals, and he is too anxious to sell a bill to run any risks