TRICKS IN DELIVERING AND COLLECTING—THE STINGY LANDLORD AND THE
PRUNES—DAY BOARD $3.00 PER WEEK—DRUMMERS $2.00 PER DAY—THE ELOPEMENT.
In the previous chapters I have said something about orders that were
turned back on my hands, and the methods I employed to make at least
some profit out of my failures. I want to say a little more on the
subject, referring principally to delivering and collecting. My remarks
will apply not only to the picture and frame business, but also to the
book and encyclopedia lines, in which I was subsequently largely and
successfully engaged.
A good talker, with a fair knowledge of his subject, can generally make
sales, but his work does not end there. He has not only to make a
contract, but he has to see that it is executed.
There is but one way to do anything in this world, and that is the right
way.
When I first started out by myself to take orders for pictures, I had in
mind the fact that I was also to do my own delivering and collecting.
As to the canvass, I was as suave as you please, but in making
deliveries I had to act according to circumstances.
In taking orders I always gave the customer a duplicate slip of his
contract. This, among other conditions, stated that articles were to be
delivered according to agreement with the agent, who had positive
instructions to make no misrepresentations, and that a countermand would
not be received under any circumstances; that any failure to deliver
would be charged up against me.
You see, this duplicate was a great ice breaker when I called around
with my pictures or books and expected the money.
Occasionally I ran across an individual who would try to back out. In
such a case I would insist on leaving the article anyway, and would say,
“Oh, that’s all right. If you can’t conveniently spare the money now I
will call around and see you again before I leave town. You can pay me
then.”
Without waiting for an answer I would turn on my heel and walk rapidly
away.
The next day I would call again. If the money was still slow to come I
would say, “I will call tomorrow morning and I wish you would please
have the amount ready for me then. I want to leave by an afternoon
train.”
If I called the third time and found no money I would rise in my
wrath—real or pretended as the case might be—and call his attention to
every clause in the duplicate contract he held. If that would not win
him over I would wind up with a tongue lashing and perhaps threaten to
have him arrested.
I most generally brought an unwilling customer to time by the third
visit, though, of course, there were cases in which no plan would win.
Sometimes I would succeed by arousing sympathy, where no other method
would have been of any effect. I would argue that a man had no right to
order an article, and put one to a great expense and loss of time,
unless he expected to accept and pay for it when delivered.
In traveling with the troupe I found far less trouble in making
deliveries and collections than I had done when by myself. The whole
business was such a public affair, and delivery and collection followed
so soon after the order was given, that few thought of refusal. A large
proportion of the orders were secured in the public hall, the rest being
obtained in canvasses made by members of the troupe during the day time.
They were also supposed to do their own delivering and collecting,
though I was often called in to attend to difficult or delicate cases.
By the way, to show you that the life of a fakir is not all devoted to
business, but that it has also its romantic side, I may as well
introduce a little occurrence which happened under my observation during
the season that my company was on the road.
Business, as I have said, was driving and I had procured a young man by
the name of Thompson to assist the artist in finishing up pictures. He
was really a fine young fellow, and his father had a large photograph
gallery of his own, in which Aleck would have continued to work had he
so chosen. But he took a notion to see something of the world, and so
came out to me, where he could knock around a bit and at the same time
draw good wages for a fair amount of labor.
As a rule I stopped at pretty good hotels, where, however, I generally
secured fair rates. Shortly after Aleck joined me we were in a town
where we had to accept a lodging place that was far from satisfactory.
The house was tolerable, considering, and I had obtained pretty good
terms, but the landlord was one of those extremely stingy, miserly
fellows that are repulsive to everybody and gives one a pain to be
thrown with. He was so stingy it even seemed to hurt him to give change.
I honestly believe he was the original introducer of the fad of using a
wart on the back of his neck for a collar button. He kept one of those
characteristic hotels so familiar to all traveling men, and in the
office there hung a sign something like this:
Single Meals, 20 Cents.
Day Board, $3.00 Per Week.
Drummers, $2.00 Per Day.
The landlord was not only mean and miserly, but he was given to the use
of strong drink. It was told as an actual fact that in one of his
drunken fits he walked out of his room, leaving his latch key on the
table. The door locked behind him and when he was ready to return he
climbed over the door, through the transom, and secured the key. He then
crawled back into the hall, through the same hole, unlocked the door and
staggered in.
Some of his transient guests once played a good joke on him, which gave
him a great deal of free advertising.
At that hotel prunes were served as a dessert three times a day and
thirty days in the month. A crowd of traveling men were sitting at the
dinner table, discussing various topics, when the landlord walked in.
One of the knights of the grip called to him:
“Say, landlord, we have made a wager here, and you are the only man who
can settle it.”
“What is it?” said mine host.
“Well,” responded the traveling man, “I bet a new hat that this dish of
prunes is the same mess that was on the table when I was here a month
ago”
The landlord replied hotly that it was not the same; that he served
fresh prunes at every meal.
“Hold on,” interrupted the drummer; “now that I come to think of it I
can decide that bet myself. When I was here before I dropped a half
dollar in the dish.”
With that he picked up a spoon, drove it into the prunes, and fished out
the fifty-cent piece he had secretly dropped in a few minutes before.
The old man, amazed, glared at those prunes for a moment and, growing
red in the face with rage, picked up the dish, went out to the kitchen
and cussed the cook for a week.
This landlord was a widower and had a very handsome daughter, whom he
treated shamefully. He forced her to work early and late, wait on the
table, do chamber work, help in the laundry, etc. He would not allow her
to wear anything better than a common gingham dress, nor could she go
anywhere nor get acquainted with anybody. She wanted an enlarged picture
of her dead mother, and when she asked her father for permission to
order it, instead of consenting he slapped her in the face. All this in
the presence of Aleck, who happened to be there at the time.
Aleck immediately left the house, but when he returned the next day it
was to present the girl with a large crayon portrait of her mother, the
picture being enclosed in a handsome frame.
The two met in the parlor every evening after that, the old man being
apparently oblivious of what was going on, and the upshot of it all was
that on the following Sunday night they eloped to a neighboring town and
were married. Aleck went back to his father’s gallery, and is there
today with his wife.
The old landlord did not try to make trouble for them, but turned all
his wrath on me. He swore I was to blame for the whole thing, threatened
to shoot me, to have me arrested, and everything else.
I denied, point blank, having had anything to do with the affair; but I
do not mind now acknowledging that Aleck did consult me, that I advised
him to make the run, and loaned him an extra twenty dollars to get away
with.
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