CHAPTER XII.
Tricks in Delivering and Collecting—The Stingy Landlord and the Prunes—Day Board $3.00 Per Week—Drummers $2.00 Per Day—The Elopement.
In the previous chapters I have said something about orders that were turned back on my hands, and the methods I employed to make at least some profit out of my failures. I want to say a little more on the subject, referring principally to delivering and collecting. My remarks will apply not only to the picture and frame business, but also to the book and encyclopedia lines, in which I was subsequently largely and successfully engaged.
A good talker, with a fair knowledge of his subject, can generally make sales, but his work does not end there. He has not only to make a contract, but he has to see that it is executed.
There is but one way to do anything in this world, and that is the right way.
When I first started out by myself to take orders for pictures, I had in mind the fact that I was also to do my own delivering and collecting.
As to the canvass, I was as suave as you please, but in making deliveries I had to act according to circumstances.
In taking orders I always gave the customer a duplicate slip of his contract. This, among other conditions, stated that articles were to be delivered according to agreement with the agent, who had positive instructions to make no misrepresentations, and that a countermand would not be received under any circumstances; that any failure to deliver would be charged up against me.
You see, this duplicate was a great ice breaker when I called around with my pictures or books and expected the money.
Occasionally I ran across an individual who would try to back out. In such a case I would insist on leaving the article anyway, and would say, “Oh, that’s all right. If you can’t conveniently spare the money now I will call around and see you again before I leave town. You can pay me then.”
Without waiting for an answer I would turn on my heel and walk rapidly away.
The next day I would call again. If the money was still slow to come I would say, “I will call tomorrow morning and I wish you would please have the amount ready for me then. I want to leave by an afternoon train.”
If I called the third time and found no money I would rise in my wrath—real or pretended as the case might be—and call his attention to every clause in the duplicate contract he held. If that would not win him over I would wind up with a tongue lashing and perhaps threaten to have him arrested.
I most generally brought an unwilling customer to time by the third visit, though, of course, there were cases in which no plan would win. Sometimes I would succeed by arousing sympathy, where no other method would have been of any effect. I would argue that a man had no right to order an article, and put one to a great expense and loss of time, unless he expected to accept and pay for it when delivered.
In traveling with the troupe I found far less trouble in making deliveries and collections than I had done when by myself. The whole business was such a public affair, and delivery and collection followed so soon after the order was given, that few thought of refusal. A large proportion of the orders were secured in the public hall, the rest being obtained in canvasses made by members of the troupe during the day time. They were also supposed to do their own delivering and collecting, though I was often called in to attend to difficult or delicate cases.
By the way, to show you that the life of a fakir is not all devoted to business, but that it has also its romantic side, I may as well introduce a little occurrence which happened under my observation during the season that my company was on the road.
Business, as I have said, was driving and I had procured a young man by the name of Thompson to assist the artist in finishing up pictures. He was really a fine young fellow, and his father had a large photograph gallery of his own, in which Aleck would have continued to work had he so chosen. But he took a notion to see something of the world, and so came out to me, where he could knock around a bit and at the same time draw good wages for a fair amount of labor.
As a rule I stopped at pretty good hotels, where, however, I generally secured fair rates. Shortly after Aleck joined me we were in a town where we had to accept a lodging place that was far from satisfactory. The house was tolerable, considering, and I had obtained pretty good terms, but the landlord was one of those extremely stingy, miserly fellows that are repulsive to everybody and gives one a pain to be thrown with. He was so stingy it even seemed to hurt him to give change. I honestly believe he was the original introducer of the fad of using a wart on the back of his neck for a collar button. He kept one of those characteristic hotels so familiar to all traveling men, and in the office there hung a sign something like this:
Single Meals, 20 Cents.Day Board, $3.00 Per Week.Drummers, $2.00 Per Day.
Single Meals, 20 Cents.Day Board, $3.00 Per Week.Drummers, $2.00 Per Day.
Single Meals, 20 Cents.
Day Board, $3.00 Per Week.
Drummers, $2.00 Per Day.
The landlord was not only mean and miserly, but he was given to the use of strong drink. It was told as an actual fact that in one of his drunken fits he walked out of his room, leaving his latch key on the table. The door locked behind him and when he was ready to return he climbed over the door, through the transom, and secured the key. He then crawled back into the hall, through the same hole, unlocked the door and staggered in.
Some of his transient guests once played a good joke on him, which gave him a great deal of free advertising.
At that hotel prunes were served as a dessert three times a day and thirty days in the month. A crowd of traveling men were sitting at the dinner table, discussing various topics, when the landlord walked in. One of the knights of the grip called to him:
“Say, landlord, we have made a wager here, and you are the only man who can settle it.”
“What is it?” said mine host.
“Well,” responded the traveling man, “I bet a new hat that this dish of prunes is the same mess that was on the table when I was here a month ago”
The landlord replied hotly that it was not the same; that he served fresh prunes at every meal.
“Hold on,” interrupted the drummer; “now that I come to think of it I can decide that bet myself. When I was here before I dropped a half dollar in the dish.”
With that he picked up a spoon, drove it into the prunes, and fished out the fifty-cent piece he had secretly dropped in a few minutes before.
The old man, amazed, glared at those prunes for a moment and, growing red in the face with rage, picked up the dish, went out to the kitchen and cussed the cook for a week.
This landlord was a widower and had a very handsome daughter, whom he treated shamefully. He forced her to work early and late, wait on the table, do chamber work, help in the laundry, etc. He would not allow her to wear anything better than a common gingham dress, nor could she go anywhere nor get acquainted with anybody. She wanted an enlarged picture of her dead mother, and when she asked her father for permission to order it, instead of consenting he slapped her in the face. All this in the presence of Aleck, who happened to be there at the time.
Aleck immediately left the house, but when he returned the next day it was to present the girl with a large crayon portrait of her mother, the picture being enclosed in a handsome frame.
The two met in the parlor every evening after that, the old man being apparently oblivious of what was going on, and the upshot of it all was that on the following Sunday night they eloped to a neighboring town and were married. Aleck went back to his father’s gallery, and is there today with his wife.
The old landlord did not try to make trouble for them, but turned all his wrath on me. He swore I was to blame for the whole thing, threatened to shoot me, to have me arrested, and everything else.
I denied, point blank, having had anything to do with the affair; but I do not mind now acknowledging that Aleck did consult me, that I advised him to make the run, and loaned him an extra twenty dollars to get away with.