Had a Cinch

1895

Couldn't Tell Funny Stories, but Knew a Trick Worth Two of That.

A drummer, as the word drummer is understood in these piping times of peace, is a man who tells you a funny story and incidentally takes your order for goods. A faculty of making himself "solid" with his customers socially is one of the most valuable features of a successful drummer's equipment. The commercial traveler is a hale fellow well met wherever he goes. There are houses whose trade is so firmly established and its hold upon their patrons so strong that their goods sell themselves almost, and the solicitor has very little soliciting to do. But even with houses of this character a smooth tongue and a ready wit count for much.

Occasionally there is a man who departs from the old lines, invents a method of his own and makes a great success of it.

"What has become of that man Jones who used to travel for you?" asked one Randolph street jobber of another the other day. "I suppose he has gone off the road. I always thought he never would make a success of it. He was too chilly. He was the chilliest man I ever saw."

"There's just where you're wrong," replied the other jobber, who deals in linseed oil. "He was the most successful traveling man I ever knew. When he was on the road, he kept us jumping to fill his orders. The only reason he isn't traveling for us today is that another house offered him a good deal bigger salary than we were willing to pay, and he is representing the other house now. He was very chilly, as you say. He was that way with everybody, his customers included. He never had a word to say to them about politics and couldn't tell a funny story if he tried. He never talked anything but oil. As soon as he got an order he walked out and never tried to conceal the fact that that was all he had come for. Yet his customers thought he was the best friend they had in the world.

"This is how he did it. As a cold blooded business proposition he decided that the strongest hold he could get on a man would be a hold on his pocketbook. He left the other drummers to do the amusing part of it, but he studied the oil market. He seemed besides to have an intuition about the fluctuations of prices which was almost prophetic. When he saw that oil was about to go up, he sat down and telegraphed to all his customers, 'Buy oil.' They followed his advice, and in nine cases out of ten they saved a lot of money by it. It only took a few experiences like this to convince them that it was a serious mistake to buy oil of anybody else. He was hardly a solicitor at all. When he told a man to buy, he bought." — Chicago Tribune.


Why They Went Off

"Are you loaded?" asked the pistol of the shotgun.
"No," said the latter; "I'm shot."
Then both exploded with laughter. — Philadelphia Call.

Know Thyself

1901

Ah, if we would watch for everything that might improve and instruct us! If the arrangements of our daily life were so disposed as to be a constant school for our minds! But oftenest we take no heed of them. Man is an eternal mystery to himself. His own person is a house into which he never enters and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of us need have continually before him the famous inscription which once instructed Socrates and was engraved on the walls of Delphi by an unknown hand, "Know thyself."

Secret of a Flower - What Might They Know?

1916

How Did the Trumpet Vine Discover the Bared Stump?

If someone advanced the theory that this plant had some unknown power of reasoning you would probably reply that "plants can't reason because they have no mind." You may change your opinion after you hear this story, related by Royal Dixon, who writes entertainingly about how near like human beings in their actions plants are.

The story is about a trumpet vine, the favorite of many an old fashioned garden. About twenty feet from where it grew was an old pine stump with the bark on. One day a fire was built about the foot of the stump, and the bark was burned off.

Immediately the trumpet vine sent forth a long trailer across the garden to the stump. It raised the tendrils, felt the smooth surface of the stump and started to climb. Before long the whole blackened surface was hidden beneath the leaves and blossoms of the new vine.

With the rough bark on the stump it provided no surface for the clinging tendrils of the vine. After the fire destroyed the bark the vine found a place to climb.

How did the plant know that the fire had prepared the stump? We don't know. Ask the flower! — Philadelphia North American.

Ten Benefits of Literature Named by Brown in Talk

1922

"Literature — Why Study It," is Subject of English Lecture

"Literature is the textbook on human nature," said H. G. Brown, instructor in English, Tuesday afternoon at the Law building in his lecture on "Literature — Why Study It." Ten benefits which can be derived from reading literature were given. "Knowledge of human nature is acquired better through familiarity with the masterpieces than even real life," Brown declared. Brown, who explained that one can associate with a man for month without knowing him as well as you could know Macbeth or Hamlet in four hours. "Literature gives all the significant details of a man's life in complete sequence, while real life gives only glimpses."

"Literature is a cure for provincialism. With this as the medium we may travel and know the world from the Moab of Ruth to the Mississippi Valley of Tom Sawyer," said Mr. Brown. "We may travel back over great periods of time and know the common people of the fourteenth century through Chaucer's Prologue. We may travel up and down through unfamiliar society."

—The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin, July 27, 1922, page 8.