Is your curiosity piqued to know wherein buyers thus contrasted may differ?  They differ endlessly, like the faces you meet on the street.  Thus, one man is born to an open, frank, friendly, and courteous manner; another is cold, reserved, and suspicious.  One is prompt, hilarious, and provocative of every good feeling, whenever you chance to meet; the other is slow, morose, and fit to waken every dormant antipathy in your soul.  An able buyer is, or becomes, observing to the last degree.  He knows the slightest differences in quality and in style, and possesses an almost unerring taste,—­knows the condition of the market,—­knows every holder of the article he wants, and the lowest price of each.  He knows the peculiarities of the seller,—­his strong points and his weak points, his wisdom and his foibles, his very temperament, and how it is acted upon by his dinner or the want of it.  He knows the estimate put upon his own note by that seller.  He knows what his note will sell for in the street.  He knows to a feather’s weight the influence of each of these items upon the mind of the seller of whom he wishes to make a purchase.  Talk about diplomacy!—­there’s not a man in any court in Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum, and his lever, and the use he can make of them, as this man knows.  He can unravel any combination, penetrate any disguise, surmount any obstacle.  Beyond all other men, he knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking,—­how to throw the burden of negotiation on the seller,—­how to get the goods he wants at his own price, not at his asking, but on the suggestion of the seller, prompted by his own politely obvious unwillingness to have the seller part with his merchandise at any price not entirely acceptable to himself.

The incompetent man, on the other hand, is presuming, exacting, and unfeeling.  He not only desires, but asserts the desire, in the very teeth of the seller, to have something which that seller has predetermined that he shall not have.  He fights a losing game from the start.  He will probably begin by depreciating the goods which he knows, or should know, that the seller has reason to hold in high esteem.  He will be likely enough to compare them to some other goods which he knows to be inferior.  He will thus arouse a feeling of dislike, if not of anger, where his interest should teach him to conciliate and soothe; and if he sometimes carry his point, his very victory is in effect a defeat, since it procures him an increased antipathy.  This the judicious buyer never does.  He repudiates, as a mere half-truth, and a relic of barbarism, the maxim, “There is no friendship in trade.”

“But,” you are asking, “do only those succeed who are born to these extraordinary endowments?  And those who do succeed, are they, in fact, each and all of them, such wonderfully capable men as you have described?”