"I suppose," said the buyer for one of the biggest middle Western
jobbing houses, addressing a friendly competitor across the table at
their club, "that Jim Gollop comes as near to being the synonym for
sunshine as any man can be."
"Yes, and that's why he succeeds so well. Somehow when I'm tired, or
depressed, I like to see Jim Gollop coming through the door. And he's
about the only commercial traveler I would ever say howdy to at those
times. He's like a tonic, Jim Gollop is. He just seems to radiate good
will, and friendliness, and optimism wherever he goes. I think I noticed
that surprising faculty of his more on this last round of his than ever
before."
The manager looked up thoughtfully, and said, "Come to think of it, I
noticed that, too. Not that he wasn't always cheerful, and persistent,
and smart enough in his business, but this last time he seemed to
fairly outdo himself. I asked him if his aunt was dead. 'Why?' says he.
'Oh, you're so happy I thought maybe you'd fallen heir to an unexpected
fortune,' I told him."
"What did he say?"
"Said 'Old man, I've found something that beats that all hollow. I've
found the philosopher's stone. I've found the back door at least to the
house of happiness.' And I'll swear I don't believe he was joking,
although it's sometimes hard to tell when Jimmy is in earnest."
"Humph! Must be in love," said the other man.
"Well, he might be worse off," said the manager. "If he draws as luckily
as I did--well--You've met my wife and kiddies."
And it did seem as if Jimmy, making his long rounds, was meeting with
inordinate success; for life smiles on those who smile and the happy
salesman is like the Happy Warrior, because all things, sooner or later,
come to his feet. The art of salesmanship is the art of winning, and
there is no such animal as a successful drummer with a perpetual grouch.
But just the same the astute Jimmy's progress was not so easily
profitable from the personal point as he had conceived, and as he had
ardently hoped. He had left New York in his customary optimism with the
boastful prediction, "I'll learn the candy girl's name, and where she
lives when she's at home, and when her birthday is, and all about her,
before I get back. And on the day I get her name I'll telegraph an order
to a New York florist to take her the biggest bunch of violets she ever
saw."
At the end of the first week he felt that the next week must surely
bring the coveted information, and at the end of the second week he made
a bet with himself that he'd find it out in the third. Then when the
third week proved equally barren, he doubled the stakes and lost them on
the fourth week.
"Anyhow," he communed with himself, "I'm more than half way through, and
shall win on the next stretch."
But his hopes, increasing as his tour of elimination progressed, began
to turn to anxieties as his margin for developments narrowed until he
was almost feverishly eager in his pursuit when he entered his last and
final week. Everywhere he went there were the same old names and the
same old faces. One or two customers had sold out, but invariably they
were men. It was on his last day, when hope had waned, that he found
what he hoped was a clue. Mrs. Ellen Sturgis, of Lansing, Michigan, who,
according to his blue book, was "quite a lady, credit A1, tall, good
dresser, very quiet, somewhat standoffish, fond of horses, because, owns
her own trap outfit and nice little cob," had sold out and gone to parts
unknown.
"Didn't she leave any address?" inquired Jimmy of the new owner, who was
an affable, elderly gentleman given to loquacity.
"Not with me. Probably at the post office. Hope I can do as well with
this business as she did, and I think I can do better. But she made
money here, all right. Of course she had a society pull to start with
because you see she was the widow of a man who was thought to be pretty
well heeled until he died; then she had to go into business to support
herself, and all the best people in the town patronized her and--anyone
can do business with that kind of a pull."
Jimmy closed his order and loitered around the mirror-garnished shop
until he got an opportunity to talk with a girl whose face was
familiar.
"Let me see," said Jimmy, thoughtfully, "Didn't Mrs. Sturgis have a
daughter who was 'most always here?"
"Nellie? Sure. You remember her, don't you? Nice looking girl with brown
hair and wonderful teeth. We all liked Nellie a lot more than we did her
mother. Stuck-up old dame, I called her. But Nellie was all to the
good."
Jimmy suddenly developed a mad desire to get away from there. He got as
far as the corner and was tempted to turn into an alleyway and do a
brief but sprightly dance on his own; but decided that he would lose no
time in finding the telegraph office.
"Got her! Got her at last!" he jubilated mentally. "Now for the violets,
then it's me for the hotel, and the long letter apologizing for not
writing sooner and--um-m-mh!--I'll tell her I broke my wrist in
Ashtabula. That's a good place to break one's wrist in. No--that won't
do. She'd wonder why I didn't dictate a letter to some blonde
hop-o-my-thumb in some nice quiet hotel. How about the flu?
Um-m-mh--afraid that wouldn't square up with my keeping on the road.
Urgent and continual business sounds too cold--considering how warm I
feel. I must never tell her the truth that I'd forgotten her name, and
what she looked like, and be the boob I am by admitting that I'd never
paid enough attention to her before then to take notice of her. Girls
don't like to think that anyone could possibly forget them after one
good, square look. Hurts their vanity, I reckon. And she's not the sort
I can write to and say, 'Kid, you made a hit with me and I'm your little
stick of candy from now until I go to some place so hot I melt!' No,
I've got to get some excuse that'll get by, or--go out into somebody's
town park and cut my throat. I'm hit so badly it hurts! And if anything
goes wrong with this deal it's--it's all off with Yours Truly. It just
seems to me that would be the one thing I've ever had happen that I
couldn't recover from!"
He had thought of her so much, by day and night, that he entertained a
strange sense of familiarity, as if he had known and loved her all
through life. So vivid were his impressions that he could not forget
little inflections of her musical voice, tiny feminine gestures, stray
sparkles of her eyes, the very echoes of her modulated laughter. All the
weeks of his search, forever arousing in him by disappointment an
increased determination, were but additions to their acquaintanceship.
All the smothered, dormant sentiment accumulated throughout his life had
been exploded, as by a spark, to burst into a brilliancy that filled his
entire horizon. Life was filled with dazzling and unexpected stars of
shining gold. There was but one moon in all his heavens, a warm,
friendly, almost mystic moon that rendered gentle and fine everything
upon which it bestowed benignancy. His universe could scarcely note the
extinguishment of a sun. He had never paused to analyze it, but had
fallen upon the truth that the love of a man of thirty-four makes or
breaks far more irrevocably than does the evanescent love of a boy. The
latter patient recovers amazingly. The former seeks a hospital alone,
and the soul of him dies!
Jimmy found less difficulty in telegraphing an extravagant order for
violets to be sent to "Miss Nellie Sturgis, care Martha Putnam Hotel,
New York," than he did in the composition of a suitable letter of
apology.
"I've never been so darned particular about what kind of stationery I
used before," he thought, as he stared at the display in a shop and
cogitated over what was the best. "In fact, come to think of it, hotels
have paid for all I've ever used, and most times I didn't care much
whether it came in reams or in rolls. Just so it would show where the
lead pencil had traveled across. About all I ever thought of a letter
was that one begins writing in the upper right hand corner, writes
straight across, then goes back to the left hand again and does it over
until the page is full, then turns it over and does some more, and at
last thinks whether he ought to sign 'Yours truly,' 'Yours sincerely,'
'Your friend,' or 'Your old pal.'"
He wished now that he had time to secure something in blue with his
monogram embossed either in the corner or the center, and with some
special envelopes to match. Ordinary paper, purchasable from a regular
shop, didn't seem good enough to be handled by those slender white
fingers he had longed to kiss. There was nothing good enough for them,
and anything less than the unattainable good enough might soil them.
"Dear me! What a particular, hard-to-please old crank!" said the young
thing who served him after he, the traveling ray of sunshine, had
departed with the most exclusive box of paper in the shop under his arm.
The fortunate, but to Jimmy Gollop unappreciated, fact is that this
world is at the present moment filled with men who have tried to write
just such letters, and that probably it always has been so since the
first cave man tried to write an excuse to the first cave girl on a
block or stone. Probably that cave man, too, lied with laborious
misgivings. Probably he pleaded everything from urgent business to a
broken head, or explained that the posts were delayed because for
thirty-four days a dinosaurus had been blocking the traffic. And
probably, just as now, the cave girl knew he lied, pouted, sulked, and
then forgave him. Perhaps in those vigorous days she swore. Perhaps some
of them do now. There are things of which, alas! one can never be
certain.
At 6:32 o'clock, p.m., after fortifying himself with dinner, James
Gollop retired to the writing room of the hotel and began. At 7:35
o'clock James Gollop thought he could write better in the privacy of his
room where there were no distractions intervened by a lot of fools who
should have been born dumb, but were unfortunately gifted with speech
that was devoted to subjects that were of no importance at all in
comparison with the epistolatory efforts of one James Gollop. By
midnight the persistent correspondent had used a box of stationery, and
had composed letters enough to have formed a book in the style of the
"Ready Letter Writers' Friend," containing everything from letters of
condolence to congratulation, and from stern business to effusive
sentiment The sole letter missing might have been one pertaining to the
birth of twins. And this was what he mailed:
"DEAR MISS STURGIS: I have atoned for my seeming negligence by
having some violets sent you to-day, fortunately remembering that
those were the flowers for which you expressed a preference on that
memorable occasion when we together visited the horse show. I am
hoping to be in New York by Thursday next when I trust I shall have
the great pleasure of seeing you at your hotel. Please transmit my
cordial good wishes to your mother, and believe me,
"Most sincerely your friend,
"J. R. GOLLOP."
In the morning he blithely whistled and sang as he packed his samples,
and, following his custom, left his route card at the desk when he paid
his bill.
"Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and then home," he confided as he tossed the
card across to the clerk. "I don't suppose you'll get any mail for me;
but one never knows what the management of the biggest chocolate company
on earth might do. So I always play safe. Business first! That's my
motto. Got it hung on the lattice in my arbor in the garden down home in
Maryland. Keeps me from forgetting that I'm a drummer instead of a
millionaire and that I owe my feed to the firm that gives me work. So
long! Wish you house full and that you keep full too. Good-bye!"
He danced his merry way through Harrisburg so ebulliently that a string
of dazed patrons breathed not until after he had gone, and in
Philadelphia outdid all his former efforts and doubled his previous
orders. The world was filled with glory and happiness. New York was but
a little way distant and above it there arched a sky of promise. He
returned to his hotel that evening and was handed two telegrams. The
first was from his firm and read:
"Mrs. Ellen Sturgis, formerly Lansing, opening new place in Easton,
Pennsylvania, wishes you to take full order. Important."
The second was from the New York florists:
"Must be mistaken address. Miss Nellie Sturgis unknown at Martha
Putnam. Please advise."
For a moment he was stunned, then his optimism, buoying him above all
rebuffs, caused him to laugh at himself.
"Poor girl! Something happened! The New York studio, and the lessons in
painting by that chap with the crazy name blew up and she's had to go
back to work. Sorry! But--by heck--if she wants to take lessons in
painting she shall have a chance some day if I have to teach her myself!
Wonder what happened to the old lady's bank roll? Must have been
something unexpected. Hard luck! Will I go to Easton? By the first train
unless they've got an aeroplane service!"
At an early hour on the following forenoon Jimmy stood outside a shop in
the fashionable quarter of Easton and read the neat sign:
The Elite Confectionery will occupy these premises Dec. 10th.
Fittings and decorations being done by Merthyn Cabinet Co.
Eagerly he advanced to the open door through which the sounds of
industrious hammering and sawing issued, and paused for a moment to
admire the growing interior.
"She's going to have a nice place, all right," he thought. "It's
harmonious and strictly first class. That's the way to do it."
He spoke to a man who was polishing some newly laid tile, who replied,
"Mrs. Sturgis? I think she's in her office. It's straight back through
the door. She was there a minute ago, with her daughter."
Not Mercury of the winged heels advanced more swiftly than did Jimmy
Gollop, nor was Mercury's heart ever fluttering so gladly. In a
disorderly little office, plainly make-shift for the time being, sat the
proprietress whom he instantly recognized as "Mrs. Sturgis, formerly of
Lansing," and at a littered table beside her, checking up a collection
of bills, sat a redheaded girl wearing glasses and whose honest face was
illuminated by a friendly grin showing fine teeth, but who Jimmy
remembered as one always to be seen behind the counter in Lansing.
"I hope you remember me too, Mr. Gollop," she said, after he had
automatically shaken hands with her mother. "I'm Nellie Sturgis. The one
you used to call 'Sturgis Number Two,'" and the friendly simper she gave
him was about as welcome as a punctured tire in a road race.