ON THE ROAD.

     Conference maketh a ready man.—­Lord Bacon.

     Now stirs the lated traveler apace
     To gain the timely inn.—­Macbeth, Act III., Sc. 3.

What is there about going to a strange town on business which should make a man’s heart feel like a cold biscuit inside of him?  A young man may have been to a certain village on endless excursions of pleasure, when his pulse beat as gloriously as the bass drum on a grand circus-entry into town, yet when he has to go to the depot to take the cars for that same town to sell goods there for the first time in his life, it is harder to carry his heart to the train than it is to lug his grip-sacks.  When you feel that way, do not feel ashamed.  All the “old heads” on the road have been in that predicament.  Talk to your heart the way you think about a mother when she mourns for her child.  You say “Let her feel bad.  It’s natural.  It’ll do her good.”  Now when your home begins to drop out of sight behind, and the conductor comes along to punch your ticket rather than to comfort you, say to your heart “Go it, you you old ninnyhammer!  It’s natural for you to thump, but you can’t interfere with business, you know!” Your mind is all right.  It’s your body.  Now, while

YOU ARE NEARING THAT FATAL TOWN,

you look back over the goods in the store.  Of course, you are positively familiar with everything in stock.  You came out on the road either because you asked to go, or because other folks had espied a faculty of persuasion in you which they thought would sell goods.  Sometimes a man looks persuasively, sometimes he talks persuasively; sometimes he both looks and talks it.  This is after he has had practice.  “Iron sharpeneth iron.  So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”  Now this town you are going to is a band of enemies.  How can you make a conquest?  By doing as Napoleon did.  Set your own time for the fight, pitch upon one man at a time, always pick out one not used to your mode of warfare, and then clean him out before he thinks the action has begun.  “Formerly,” says Bovee, naively, “when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.”

HERE IS THE TOWN NOW.

How dirty those houses look!  O, yes, they are the habitations of the poor.  You know the hotel you are going to, of course.  You know where it is.  Now you grab your valises, your overcoat is on, and you climb down.  Want a ’bus?  It’s only fifty cents for a ride of a block and a half!  Well, you will get along without it.  The labor will get your blood going.  You have thus made a sale already, equal to two dollars.  Put that down to your credit.  By this time, although you are among the Philistines, you are yourself again.  You go into the wash-room of the hotel, enter the dining-room, eat a very poor meal, and get up to begin the fight.  Now sit down a half-hour and let your food get started in your stomach.