etc., then asked the price. I quoted $50. 'That settles it,' says he,
'I wouldn't have it; a good gun can't be bought for any such money,'
and he dropped it as if it was a hot brick. The next time I showed it
I asked $75, and I sold it at $65."

"Yes," said Shively, "the fools still live; I'm one of 'em. I suppose
I do things just as bad as that every day, but I don't do it
knowingly. Here's this craze over Smith & Wesson's revolvers. A man,
for some good reason of his own, wants a revolver in the house. He
hopes he shall never have to shoot with it, but for fear he may need
one he buys it. The chances are ninety-nine in one hundred that he has
never been a marksman, or if he was he is so much out of practice that
he could not hit a door off hand, and with his nerves steady. I show
him a good revolver at $2.50, or a double action bull-dog at $3. But
he asks, 'Have you Smith & Wesson's?' Of course I have; single action
$9.35; double-action, $10.35. I explain that the cheap one is as safe
to the shooter as this is; that the chances are not one in a hundred
that a man can jump out of bed excitedly and hit a burglar off-hand;
that no burglar, hearing a shot, waits to be informed whose make of
revolver is used, and that practically the cheaper pistol is the most
sensible for him to buy. But he has a foolish idea that he is going to
be a much more formidable fellow with a Smith & Wesson under his head,
and he takes that. And because of just such idiotic men Smith & Wesson
can ask a big price for their goods."

I was much interested in that talk, and sorry when the two men
separated. But I was there to sell Shively some goods, and I went at
it right heartily.

"I am rather tired of the gun business," said he, "and would drop that