One dealer cannot understand why people needing planks or sand go past
his door, to spend their mon with t’other dealers, Dadd & Son.
His stock is just as good as Dadd’s; he gives as much for patron’s
scads; why, then, do people pass his door, and pass him up forevermore?
Perhaps he lacks the sort of charm that will all prejudice disarm, that
makes his gladsome patrons shout, “I like to deal with that old scout.”
A man may study all the tricks of commerce, trade or politics, may
know his biz from A to Zed, and yet still fail to get ahead, if he
has not that winning way that makes a new hit every day. One doctor’s
good at making friends; from door to door he blithely wends, and fills
his patients up with pills, and cheerfully they pay his bills. This
doctor’s soon in Easy street; his motor choos along the street, he
wears large diamonds on his tie, his life is one long piece of pie.
Another sawbones knows full well all lore the physics books can tell.
He studied medicine in Rome, and studied it some more at home. He knows
all corners of his game, all ailments of the human frame, and he could
cure the hopeless guy that other docs give up to die. But people say,
“We’d rather croak than have that sour-faced doctor bloke!”
And thus it is in every line; the man who deals in coal or pine, the
man who sells a churn or farm, should have that asset men call “charm.”
With that on tap the world goes slick, and people say you are a brick;
they buy your hats, they buy your gourds, they buy your beeswax, beans
or boards. And if you lack it they will trot to one whose manner hits
the spot.