If I were selling nails or glass, or pills or shoes or garden sass, or
honey from the bee--whatever line of goods were mine, I'd study up that
special line and know its history.
If I a stock of rags should keep, I'd read up sundry books on sheep and
wool and how it grows. Beneath my old bald, freckled roof, I'd store
some facts on warp and woof and other things like those. I'd try to
know a spinning-jack from patent churn or wagon rack, a loom from
hog-tight fence; and if a man came in to buy, and asked some leading
question, I could answer with some sense.
If I were selling books, I'd know a Shakespeare from an Edgar Poe, a
Carlyle from a Pope; and I would know Fitzgerald's rhymes from Laura
Libbey's brand of crimes, or Lillian Russell's dope.
If I were selling shoes, I'd seize the fact that on gooseberry trees,
good leather doesn't grow; that shoe pegs do not grow like oats, that
cowhide doesn't come from goats--such things I'd surely know.
And if I were a grocer man. I'd open now and then a can to see what
stuff it held; 'twere better than to writhe in woe and make reply, "I
didn't know," when some mad patron yelled.
I hate to hear a merchant say: "I think that this is splendid hay," "I
guess it's first class tea." He ought to know how good things are, if
he would sell his silk or tar or other goods to me. Oh, knowledge is
the stuff that wins; the man without it soon begins to get his trade in
kinks. No matter where a fellow goes, he's valued for the things he
knows, not for the things he thinks.