None but those who are in the business know the assiduous attention with which the dry-goods jobber follows up his customers.  None but they know the urgent necessity of doing this.  The jobber may have travelled a thousand miles to make his customer’s acquaintance, and to prevail upon him to come to Boston to make his purchases; and some neighbor, who boards at the hotel he happens to make his resting-place, lights upon him, shows him attention, tempts him with bargains not to be refused, prevails upon him to make the bulk of his purchases of him, before his first acquaintance even hears of his arrival.  To guard against disappointments such as this, the jobber sends his salesmen to live at hotels, haunts the hotels himself, studies the hotel-register far more assiduously than he can study his own comfort, or the comfort of his wife and children.  Of one such jobber it was said, facetiously,—­“He goes the round of all the hotels every morning with a lantern, to wake up his customers.”  I had an errand one day at noon to such a devotee.  Inquiring for him in the counting-room, I was told by his book-keeper to follow the stairs to the top of the store, and I should find him.  I mounted flight after flight to the attic, and there I found, not only the man, but also one or two of his customers, surrounding a huge packing-case, upon which they had extemporized a dinner, cold turkey and tongue, and other edibles, taken standing, with plenty of fun for a dessert.  The next time we happened to meet, I said,—­“So you take not only time, but also customers, by the forelock!”

“Yes, to be sure,” was his answer; “let ’em go to their hotel to dinner in the middle of a bill, and somebody lights upon ’em, and carries ’em off to buy elsewhere; or they begin to remember that it is a long way home, feel homesick, slip off to New York as being so far on the way, and that’s the last you see of ’em.  No, we’re bound to see ’em through, and no let-up till they’ve bought all they’ve got on their memorandum.”

We have not yet touched the question of credit.  To whom shall the jobber sell his goods?  It is the question of questions.  Many a man who has bought well, who in other respects has sold well, who possessed all the characteristics which recommend a man to the confidence and to the good-will of his fellows, has made shipwreck of his fortunes because of his inability to meet this question.  He sold his goods to men who never paid him.  To say that in this the most successful jobbers are governed by an instinct, by an intuitive conviction which is superior to all rules of judgment, would be to allege what it would be difficult to prove.  It would be less difficult to maintain that every competent merchant, however unconscious of the fact, has a standard of judgment by which he tries each applicant for credit.  There are characteristics of men who can safely be credited, entirely familiar to his thoughts.  He looks upon the man and instantly feels that he is or