Some merchants are so all-fired dumb, you wonder how they ever come
to sell the stuff they have in store, and keep the sheriff from the
door. Old Binkson is a lot that way; he seldom has a word to say. I ask
him for a pound of lime; he wraps it up, and all the time, he wears a
tragic air of doom, and sheds an atmosphere of gloom. He never chats,
he never spiels, nor jumps up high and cracks his heels. He isn’t
grouchy or unstrung; he never learned to wag his tongue.
Oh, silence is a golden thing, when ’tisn’t worked too hard, by jing.
But none of us will stand up strong for men who gabble all day long,
and elocute a thousand miles in fifty-seven varied styles. The dealer
who is prone to talk until you hear him round a block, is worse than
t’other kind of bird, who’s never known to spring a word.
But if you’ve scantling you would sell, you ought to boost it wisely
well, and if a gent should buy a plank, to build himself a dipping
tank, you might suggest ere home he speeds, that you have other things
he needs.
I called on Lumber Dealer Gaff, to buy a shingle and a half. He put my
purchase in a sack, and wrapped a string around and back, and as he
toiled, in manner gay, he talked to pass the time away.
“The farmers now, in busy troops, are building stately chicken coops;
the winter soon will hit the road, and hens must have a warm abode, or
they won’t lay their luscious eggs, but stand around on frozen legs.”
And that recalled the fact to me that I had hens, some ninety-three,
and ere I left that lumber store, I bought a wagon load or more, of
stuff to build a chicken shed; it’s standing now, all painted red.
And that’s the way big sales are made, and that is how men build up
trade. Talk corn cribs at the proper time, or prove a silo is sublime,
but in an incidental strain, and not as though you gladly sprain your
conscience--which I hope is hale--in eagerness to get the kale.
Suggestion is a noble art; the wise man gets it down by heart.