Part 6

Apropos of hotels, I have discovered a curious fact: the farther you go the worse they get, and even if you strike a good one occasionally it only increases your sorrow, for comparison augments the future misery. It's no use to try to pick your hotel. No matter which one you select in a town, you'll be sorry you didn't go to the other. And if you make a change and go to the other you're dead certain to regret that you didn't know when you were well off and stay where you were.

It's no use to complain. I've tried it. Night before last I slept in a room that was apparently a gymnasium for rats. About two o'clock, when they began to use the pit of my stomach for a spring-board, I went down to the office and pried the clerk out from behind the cigar counter.

"See here," I said, "I can't sleep, there's so much noise."

"Sorry, sir, but I can't help it," he replied, flicking a dust atom from the register. "This is a hotel. The Sanit_o_rium is on the next street. Ever try powders?"

"What on?" I queried, not to be outdone, "the rats?"

"Rats? I do hope ye haven't got them. The last man that--"

"No, I haven't got 'em, but the room has. They're all over the place."

"Rats, eh?" and the clerk gave the register a twirl. "Let's see, you're in 51--dollar room. Couldn't expect buffaloes at that price, could ye?"

I stayed in the office the rest of the night and in the morning the clerk pointed me out to his chief.

"That gent," he said, "has insomniay."

"That won't do, young man," said the landlord, with a withering look. "We can't have such things in this house. It's a family hotel."

I tried making inquiries, but it's no good. Every man in town will swear that some particular hotel is "the best this side the Mississippi." Foolishly enough, I tried to quiz the clerk of one house, while I was registering. I wound up a few queries about the table with the conundrum, "Are your eggs fresh?" He knew the answer.

"Fresh?" he drawled, looking straight at me. Then he rang a bell, and cried, "Front!" The one bell-boy appeared from somewhere, eating what was once an apple.

"Gent to hund'erd an' thirteen," said the clerk. "An', boy, stop at the dining-hall on your way back and tell the head waiter that this gentleman is to have his eggs laid on his toast by the hens direct."

That was the end of my attempts at previous investigating. Now if I cannot eat the food, I content myself with chewing the cud of bitter reflection. But I'd barter my immortal soul for a square meal at mother's round table.

The time I've put in at the different grocery stores to-day has served as a regular eye-opener to me as to the game I'm up against. Apparently nobody in this whole country except the patrons of the Eagle eat any packed provisions at all, and our special brand seems to be a dead one on all the shelves. I couldn't give the stuff away, much less sell it. I did place one order for a hundred pails of lard, but I learned to-night that the fellow is going into insolvency in a day or two, so I guess you'd better not send the stuff.

Taking it by and large, I have discovered that a thorough course in hypnotism would be the best equipment for a successful salesman of our particular kind of goods. For instance, if I could look old Sol Blifkins of the Harrod's Creek Bazaar and Emporium in the eye, and make him believe that folks were just clamoring for frankfurts instead of rum in these parts, and compel him to see a blank space where our aged cans are still lumbering his shelves, I fancy the thing would be a cinch. One of our fellows at Harvard, the son of an Episcopal bishop, wrote me a while ago that his father had decided upon his taking orders, and that it was a blamed hard proposition; I don't know what his special line is, but if it can match this gunning for pork buyers he has my sincere sympathy.

I keep running across Job Withers. I think he's detailed by his house to watch me. He arrived at the City Hotel this morning just as I was leaving it to go on a still hunt for a ham sandwich. He greeted me cheerily.

"Ah! been stopping at the City? Good hotel. Fine table."

"Is it?" I said calmly.

"Yes, indeed; best this side of Indianapolis."

Thank heaven, I'm going the other way. I didn't tell him that. What I did say was: "You say this is a good hotel and a good table?" He nodded. "Well," I went on, "let me tell you a story." That staggered him, for I saw he realized that if I'd reached the story stage I was due for business.

"There was once a little boy," I proceeded, "who was sitting on the walk under a green apple tree, doubled up with cramps and howling like a pocket edition fiend. A bespectacled lady of severe cast of countenance, stopped and asked him his trouble. 'Them,' said the boy, pointing to the tree, 'and I've an orful pain.'

"'Pain!' said the lady, 'don't you know there's no such thing? You only think so. Have faith and you'll have no pain.'

"'Gee!' said the boy, 'that's all right. You may think there's no pain, but,' rubbing his stomach dolefully, 'I've positive inside information.' And so have I about this hotel," I said to Withers as I left him. Confidentially, I think Withers' label reads "N. G." My one object in life is to put him off the reservation. From now on watch

Your hustling son, PIERREPONT.

P.S. Please ask the cashier to forward an immediate check for enclosed voucher--a bill presented by the landlord of the Eagle Hotel. The "medical services" were for typhoid fever, contracted by his family. It appears that your drummer who came here last fall emptied part of the contents of his sample case in a vacant lot back of the hotel.

LETTER No. XII.

_Pierrepont puts one of the paternal theories into execution with unfortunate results and recites some drummer's yarns with philosophical addenda._

MUDDY FORK, IND., April 21, 189--

_Dear Father_:

The tone of your last letter isn't altogether pleasing to me, nor does it reflect credit on yourself. You hint that because I am patient under this life of hardship and abuse, spent in trying to convince people that what they know about Graham & Co's. stuff is all wrong--you hint, I say, that I am a mule. If that is so, your knowledge of natural history ought to show you that you are not patting yourself on the back to any great extent; you are my father, you know. You remind me of what Johnny Doolittle, who used to live next door to us, once said to his father when the old man remonstrated at his lack of table manners.

"Johnny, you are a perfect pig!" shouted old Doolittle.

"Well, pa," replied Johnny, as innocent as could be, "ain't a pig a hog's little boy?"

I mention Johnny merely to remind you that the sort of reviling I have been getting of late out here in this God-forsaken country; on duty for the house, has its recoil and you're the fellow who's getting hit. It's worse than old Elder Hoover's famous gun that Uncle Ephraim used to tell me about. According to him, there was a big rabbit hunt one day, and the Elder was persuaded to join. Some of the backsliders had rigged up a gun for his special use, loaded with a double charge of powder and shot and rammed tighter than glue. At last Doc drew a bead on a big jack and let go. When the roar had ceased and the smoke lifted, the Elder was seen on his back, pawing the air with hands and feet and shouting for help.

"Did the gun kick, Elder?" asked one of the bad hunters.

"Kick," roared the good man, "it nearly kicked me into hell, for if I hadn't been so stunned I'd have taken the name of the Lord in vain, as sure as I'm a miserable sinner."

Now if you want me to kick, dear father, I can do a job that would make a Missouri mule look like a grasshopper. I'm shod with good hard facts which you know as much about as I do. If decency doesn't suit you, I'll give you an exhibition of bag-punching that will make your head swim.

I now beg leave to report on the result of one of your pieces of advice as to ways and means in selling. A little while back, you remember, you said that I was pretty sure to run into a buyer who would bring me a pail of lard which he would say was made by a competitor, and ask what I thought of such stuff. Then, when I had condemned it by and large, you allowed he would tell me it was our own lard and the store would have the grand cachinnation on me. What I ought to say, you observed, was, that I didn't think So-and-So could produce such good stuff. That would clinch an order, sure enough--still according to you.

Well, I ran into the identical thing at Higginbotham Bros., in this town. Just as I was nailing an order for 200 pails with Lige Higginbotham, his brother Nat blew in with some lard that he said was made by Skinner & Co., our big rivals, and asked me what I thought of that for a bucket of slush.

I had presence of mind enough to remember what you had said, and I told him that it was a blamed sight better lard than I thought Skinner & Co. were capable of putting out. Then I waited for the laugh at Nat's expense, but there wasn't any. It was very, very quiet, a stillness relieved only by the working of Lige's jaws on his quid.

"Well," said he, after a pause that I knew was deadly, "if you, a competitor, say it's good lard, why, gosh dang it, it _must_ be all right. And seein' that Skinner's always treated us white, I guess I'll telegraph that order for 200 pails instead of givin' it to you."

You see the lard _was_ Skinner's, as I saw a minute afterwards by the cover on the pail. This little incident gives me serious doubts whether you can safely regard all men as liars.

There happens to be quite a jolly crowd of drummers of various persuasions at this hotel just at present, and last night we had a little _seance_ in the smoking-room for mutual inspiration and advancement. The talk naturally got rather shoppy at last, and the fellows began bragging of the business they did. A drummer for grindstones said that he thought he'd average up about six sales a day, and a fellow in whiskey allowed that he would make at least ten. Then a Hebrew, who travelled with neckties, declared that he could take in about a dozen orders, and so it went. I modestly admitted that I was handicapped, and that two sales per diem were about all I could attain to under the circumstances. Of course that's more than I do make, but, as you say, you've got to impress the world with the fact that you're some pumpkins or you won't get assessed at even cucumbers.

They'd all got through their little yarns, except one thin-faced, quiet chap who sat in a corner and didn't have much to say. Finally the Hebrew pounced on him, thinking he'd have some fun at his expense.

"You hafn't told us vat you do, mein frent," he said to the quiet fellow. "Eferypody must speak in this exberience meeting. How many sales do you make?"

The man looked up with a sort of weary expression on his face and replied:

"Well, if I make one sale a year, I think I'm doing pretty well."

"Von sale a year!" exclaimed the descendant of Aaron, with a pitying smile. "Von sale a _year_! Vy, vot do you travel for?"

"Suspension bridges," replied the quiet man, and we all regarded our cigar ashes in silence. After a while we suspended the Hebrew from the association for not making good at the bar.

One of the crowd is a Boston fellow who is out selling encyclopedias. He has the usual Hub classicism, aided and abetted by a desire to ask conundrums. He hit everybody good and hard, and then landed on me.

"Why are you so different from Circe?" he asked.

Of course I gave it up. Does anybody ever guess conundrums they don't know?

"Because Circe turned men into hogs, while you are trying to turn hogs into men," he replied, and I started for bed then and there. Always on the hog, always! When will it end?

This town is full and boiling over with drummers. I never saw so many in one day in my life. There is more shop talk going on here to-night than occurs in a week in all the Siegel-Cooper stores. I verily believe that there are ten men here to try and sell something, for every man there is to buy. Somehow or other the town has assumed the proportions of a junction, or a drummers' fair. The townspeople, they say, are much excited over it, and the village constable is at the town hall swearing in two deputies. As Job Withers has made himself very conspicuous during the day, I think the reason for the reign of terror is evident.

Job, by the way, had a bit of the conceit taken out of him at the depot this evening. Several of us were down there to inquire about trains, etc. As no train would stop for nearly an hour, none of the station hands were about. Withers took the fact as a text and delivered a short, but exceedingly ornate, sermon to the crossing flagman on the moribund condition of the town. He fairly tore its reputation to shreds. Finally, with one finger laying down the law in the palm of his other hand, Job fired this at the defenceless old flagman:

"I tell you, sir, this town needs more life and energy. Something needs to come along and shake things up."

Just then the Inter-state Express dashed by at sixty miles an hour, and "something" came along. It was a heavy mail bag tossed from Uncle Sam's car, and it took poor Job plumb in the centre of gravity. Over he went, like an Arabian acrobat. When we picked him out of the ditch he looked like what's left after a Kansas cyclone. But he was game.

"Boys, this time the laugh's on me," he cried. "The evening's artificial irrigation will be charged to my house."

I hate to do it, but I must. When Job tries to cut me out of a trade with his stories, I'll make him the hero of one of mine. Then I guess I'll coax a little business by his fat sides.

Speaking of trains, reminds me of the laugh some of the boys had on Sol Lichinstein the other day. He was to take the 3.30 out of Michigan City, and about quarter of three his great bulk--he is very corpulent--was seen dashing down the street at furious pace. A half hour later two or three other drummers, who had proceeded leisurely to the station, found him still out of breath. "What made you run so, Sol?" asked one of them.

"Hang it all!" he answered, "the clock in front of the jeweler's store in the hotel block was wrong. It said 3.20."

"The clock on the post, Sol?" asked one of the party.

"Yes; confound it!"

"Well, Sol, that clock's said 3.20 every time I've been here for four years. The hands are painted on."

When the story was told to a party of us, one man spoke up after the laugh and said: "Well, it's not surprising. Lichinstein is always chock full of business."

I met him to-day for the first time and found this statement is true. He _is_ chock full of business--liquor business is his line.

Apropos of business, I may state that I think you must find some cause to congratulate yourself on the gains I am making. As you say, new methods _are_ better than old and I am beginning to believe I have discovered a few of them. It has taken me some time, for it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks and, although I'm not so old, still I'm somewhat removed from the young pup you once called me. Still, an old dog can learn new tricks--by himself. Old Gabe Short, of Harrod's Creek, says the only reason you cannot teach an old dog new tricks is because he has got on to the game and refuses to learn 'em, knowing that he will be called up to perform for company. Old Gabe knows, for he has heaps of opportunity for observation. He hasn't done any work for over thirty years. The story goes that he was such a coward at the outbreak of the Rebellion that he said, that rather than go to war he'd stay at home and lick stamps. And he did it, too. After all the men went to war he got the postmastership.

Gabe has a fat old water spaniel who is too lazy to do anything but eat and chase fleas. The latter task is usually performed in half-hearted fashion. One day--but I'll try to tell it as old Gabe does.

"One day an out-of-town dog was friendly with Neb and after he left there seemed to be a heap o' worry on my dog's mind. He just couldn't keep still. It was scratch here and nibble there. Fleas never seemed to stir him up like that afore and I made up my mind that the strange cur had imported a new brand of the critters. Finally the old fellow was so bad that I gave him a dose of flea powder. Seems like it druv the varmints all into his tail, fur he chased it fur hours, as he hadn't done since he was a purp. I was busy and anyway I'd used all the powder I had. He's so fat he couldn't catch that tail and it was funny an' a bit pitiful, too, the way he went after it.

"Finally, just as he seemed driven to desperation, he stopped short. He stood and looked around at that tail. Then he slowly backed up against the counter till his tail laid alongside. Then he pushed hard and grabbed. When he got through chewing that tail if there was a flea left it was mincemeat."

I merely mention this in passing to illustrate that experience is a pretty good teacher, and that it must be your own experience--no one's else will do. Your counsels and rules of life are very enlightening and all that, but they are really of little value compared with the hard knocks of actual experience. You may explain to a boy till you're black in the face that fire is a dangerous element to monkey with, but it takes a few burnt fingers to instill real dread of a cannon-cracker. You are giving me the experience and I have no doubt that it's the best thing that could happen to me. But really, father, you may overdo it. Your anxiety for my future may make my present unduly uncomfortable.

In this connection I am reminded of a story told by the pastor of Tremont Temple in Boston, Dr. George C. Lorimer, in a lecture that I attended. He didn't vouch for the truth of the story, but thought it enforced a moral. "A nestful of linnets," he said, "were in a field in India. Their mother had flown away and left them. They were cold and hungry and flapped their wings and cried. An enormous elephant chanced to note their plight. 'Poor little things,' said the elephant. 'No mother, no one to keep you warm and nestle you. My mother's heart aches for you. I will nestle you and keep you warm.' And the elephant, in pure goodness of heart, sat down upon the nest of poor little linnets."

It may not be out of order to mention that you quite frequently sit upon

Your loving son, PIERREPONT.

P.S. Just a suggestion. A leading grocer here says, that if the labels on our canned goods did not display the name "Graham" so prominently, he thinks he could sell some of them.

LETTER No. XIII.

_A farmhouse, a farmer's daughter and bucolic pleasures and pastimes give Pierrepont a respite from commercial activities, but not from the study of pig._

DOOLITTLE MILLS, IND., May 25, 189--

_Dear Father_:

I take it that you are now enough of a philosopher to suppress any surprise you may feel to see a letter dated at this outpost of civilization. I admit that it's somewhat off the beaten track for the distribution of lard and pork products, but I got here legitimately enough, as you shall learn. The people hereabouts raise their own hogs, and I believe it would interest you to see the real article. Their lard is so attractive in appearance that I mistook it for vanilla ice cream when shown some last night, not stopping to think that your simon-pure farmer never uses his cream for such frivolous purposes. However, their stuff showed me that the nearer you get to nature and the farther from the stock-yards, the more respectable an animal is the pig.

But to the adventure that brought me here. I left for the southern part of the state yesterday morning on the Gatling Gun Express, and all went well until we struck a cow at about noon, a few miles from where I have pitched the Graham headquarters. The cow is now beef, all right, but the locomotive is also scrap-iron. The track was blocked for keeps at the lonely crossing where the horror occurred, and there seemed to be no escape from a dreary wait for the wrecking train. But I investigated, and soon discovered an ancient farmer with a horse whose meridian of life had long since passed, jogging along toward somewhere--anywhere, away from the slough of despond in which the cow had deposited us. I grabbed my samples--which, by the way, are of no earthly use in this section of the world--and begged for transportation. I got it for twenty-five cents and a cigar whose antecedents I fain would forget, and started for the interior.

It was an interesting locality where we brought up. Doolittle's Mills are apparently so named because there's so little doing in them that the building which gives the place its name looks like a church where all the citizens are atheists. Once a year, in the time of the early spring freshets, they saw a few boards for exercise. But just now the farmers have the call, and the call is usually the tin-horn summons to dinner, which is the only sound that awakes any interest in the people. Just now they are putting in potatoes, corn, and beans, and the only fertilizer they use are cuss words and hard cider, which go well enough together at the start, but don't hitch worth a cent at harvest time.

My rustic benefactor was christened Martin Van Buren Philpot, but long use has shrunk his cognomen considerably, and he is now known as "Vebe." He has a big quiverful of children, the thirteenth of whom arrived about three weeks ago. "Vebe" has named him Theodore Roosevelt, and is still waiting for the silver mug. Says he's afraid the thirteen part of it will queer the kid's chances.

You would like Mrs. Philpot, I think. She is full of homely philosophy and has a face to match. Her cooking, though, might be improved by a course of training under Oscar of the Waldorf. I don't just remember the sort of biscuits Ma used to produce, but if they were anything like Mrs. Philpot's I can account for your dyspepsia.

The little Philpots are sportive creatures who insist on showing me the pigs about a dozen times a day. I believe I unwarily dropped a hint as to my occupation when I arrived, and they seem to think I want to see pork all the time. They call me the hog man, but they are such innocent kids that I can't show any resentment. This afternoon they took me out to the pasture to view a sit-still's nest. Said the mother bird was on the eggs and wouldn't fly, even when handled. Just before we reached the place two of them ran ahead, and Johnny Philpot clapped his straw hat on the ground and signalled me to hurry.

"She's here, all right, mister," said Johnny, quivering with excitement. "Now you jest stoop down, and when I lift my hat, you grab the bird."

Slowly the brim of yellow straw rose, and with lightning-like celerity I dashed my hand through the opening. Then there was a sharp click and a wild whoop from myself as a steel trap closed its jaws on my fingers and held on like death. You never saw such delighted children in your life. They danced around me all the while I was trying to get the confounded thing off my hand, and said I "swore orful." I guess I did. After awhile Johnny helped me, and allowed I was real funny. He'll never know how near he came to a violent death in his happy childhood.