as you have always dressed—­with easy-fitting business garments.  Absolutely nothing on your person gives offense, either in newness or oldness.  You enter the store to whose proprietor you intend to sell goods.  If you know him and he is busy, you nod and avoid a talk.  This is both difficult and unlucky.  If he is at your service, you state that you have come to show him your samples.  You do not hope he needs anything at the start.  Of course, he needs nothing.  That does not enter into the question.  He will buy at the end.  You now, if your samples are with you, pick out some medium bargains.  Reserve your powerful arguments.  Try to make him understand the true value of these goods.  Nothing under the sun is so powerful as example.  Now, to furnish examples, you must state who sells this particular line of goods.  Mention the names with all the precision, volubility and confidence in the world.  He may evince no interest, but it has moved him greatly to hear all those names!  Now he begins to talk prices to you.  The chances are that he is “drawing the long bow”—­that is, that he is putting the prices at which he buys full low enough!  Do not dispute him.  Never argue with him.  Accept all he says as gospel.  Very soon he will be on the other tack.  You will be talking, and you can judge whether he has told the truth or not.  Now you are both on excellent terms.  He thinks you are a very decent young fellow.

BRING ON YOUR “LEADERS.”

You ought to have some little line that you are selling for less than it is worth.  Give him the solemn privilege of getting some of it.  He wavers, he is lost.  This is the entering wedge.  If he is sharp enough to buy only “leaders,” he is too sharp for you, and for your house.  Ten chances to one he would never pay anyway.  You must have picked out a poor man to start on.  But if you have an ordinary gentlemanly man of business, he will take some goods of you.  Canvass him for everything.  Do not neglect your work now it has come.  He is wavering everywhere.  He is contradicting by his acts nearly every assertion he made behind his entrenchments.  Never mind that.  Do not leave him until there is “no more buy in him.”  Now, after you have all the items—­and

NEVER STOP HIM

when he is giving them—­sum them up, read them over, take his name (firm name), his post-office (not his railroad station), his railroad station, his express company, his railroad, absolutely everything.  Make his name “Owens,” not “Owen,” “Ransom’s Sons” not Ransom & Sons, “Smythe” not “Smith,” if that be the way he puts it.  A man is very tender about his name.  Never forget that.  Impress those things on your shipping-clerk at home.  Tell him you have sold Edwards Pierrepont a bill of goods, and that this particular buyer has

A PRIVATE GRAVEYARD