So many folks are selling things we really do not need! They sell us
pups and spiral springs, and patent chicken feed. A dozen times a
day or more I have to drop my pen; some chap is ringing at the door,
to sell a setting hen. A gent of rather seedy looks came to my shack
today, to sell me fifty-seven books--the works of Bertha Clay. And one
is selling china eyes, one deals in pewter spoons, and one would sell
me whisker dyes, another, musty prunes.
I never waddle through the woods but some one comes along, and tries
to sell me useless goods, with tiresome dance and song. I’m weary of
the man who yells of jimcracks gone to seed; how stately is the man who
sells the goods men really need! I watch the lumberman go past, upon
his useful chores, to sell a mariner a mast, or fit a house with doors;
his boards and beams, of seasoned wood, for helpful arts are made; he
does our social fabric good when he builds up his trade.
There’s nothing in the lumber store superfluous or vain; you do not
seek that dealer’s door fool doodads to obtain. And every time he sells
a bill, improvements there will be; the coin he puts into his till
helps the community. And when his goods are in demand, the better times
have come, your town will flourish and expand, the wheels of commerce
hum.
I’m tired of buying pumpkin trees, and postholes by the crate, and
ostrich eggs, and swarms of bees, and tinhorn real estate. Hereafter I
shall blow my roll for articles worth while, a peck of lime, a load of
coal, a good large lumber pile.