Part 2

“And when they want some woodwork--and want the best of good work, which is the Curtis kind--or joists or lath or siding, to me they come a’riding--that’s business, do ye mind?”

You never see him slouching, you never see him grouching, or talking of despair; he always keeps things humming, he’s always up a-coming, his hind feet in the air.

SUGGESTION

Some merchants are so all-fired dumb, you wonder how they ever come to sell the stuff they have in store, and keep the sheriff from the door. Old Binkson is a lot that way; he seldom has a word to say. I ask him for a pound of lime; he wraps it up, and all the time, he wears a tragic air of doom, and sheds an atmosphere of gloom. He never chats, he never spiels, nor jumps up high and cracks his heels. He isn’t grouchy or unstrung; he never learned to wag his tongue.

Oh, silence is a golden thing, when ’tisn’t worked too hard, by jing. But none of us will stand up strong for men who gabble all day long, and elocute a thousand miles in fifty-seven varied styles. The dealer who is prone to talk until you hear him round a block, is worse than t’other kind of bird, who’s never known to spring a word.

But if you’ve scantling you would sell, you ought to boost it wisely well, and if a gent should buy a plank, to build himself a dipping tank, you might suggest ere home he speeds, that you have other things he needs.

I called on Lumber Dealer Gaff, to buy a shingle and a half. He put my purchase in a sack, and wrapped a string around and back, and as he toiled, in manner gay, he talked to pass the time away.

“The farmers now, in busy troops, are building stately chicken coops; the winter soon will hit the road, and hens must have a warm abode, or they won’t lay their luscious eggs, but stand around on frozen legs.”

And that recalled the fact to me that I had hens, some ninety-three, and ere I left that lumber store, I bought a wagon load or more, of stuff to build a chicken shed; it’s standing now, all painted red.

And that’s the way big sales are made, and that is how men build up trade. Talk corn cribs at the proper time, or prove a silo is sublime, but in an incidental strain, and not as though you gladly sprain your conscience--which I hope is hale--in eagerness to get the kale.

Suggestion is a noble art; the wise man gets it down by heart.

THE PIONEERS

Our fathers, in the bygone years, were bold and hardy pioneers. They cleared the country of their foes, and made it blossom as the rose. On prairies vast, by lonely lakes, they scrapped with Injuns and with snakes, and whipped the large, fat grizzly bear, and chased the groundhog to its lair.

When first they cleared their patch of ground, the pioneers felt they were bound to build thereon some sort of shacks, so they got busy with the ax. How dire and gloomy was their plight! There was no lumber yard in sight; they could not take a bunch of cash, and buy their windows, doors and sash; they could not seek the haunts of trade, and buy a house already made. The modern man, who plans to build a house, with children to be filled, can to the lumber palace go, and spend a little roll of dough, and get his boards, all planed and grooved, so slick they couldn’t be improved. And in a very little while he builds a house that’s quite in style.

But it was different, my dears, with those old hardy pioneers; they humped themselves like busy bees, and with their axes chopped down trees, and of the branches made them bare, and chopped and chopped, and made them square. And as they toiled around the boles, the Injuns shot them full of holes. How would you like to build a shack, and have an arrow in your back?

But still they toiled on tireless shanks, and fashioned doors of three-inch planks, and made their windows, high and broad, all out of plumb and wapperjawed. Oh, did they sing, or did they swear, when interrupted by a bear, which sized them up as juicy food, and chased them through the lonely wood? Oh, did they laugh, or did they wail, when wildcats got upon their trail? For once an hour their labors ceased; they had to scrap with man or beast. It’s hard to work ’neath such a strain; it frets the heart and jars the brain.

Just ponder o’er those early shacks, all built with rusty saw and ax; they once were viewed with lofty pride, in them our fathers lived and died. How would you like it if you had to build log cabins, like your dad? You’d surely think it pretty hard--you’d yearn for some good lumber yard.

OCTOBER DAYS

It is a nipping, eager air; the signs of Fall are everywhere. The coal man smiles, the ice man grieves; the trees have shed their summer leaves; the cockleburs and other flowers that brighten all the summer hours, are lying dead; the birds have flown to lands where blizzards are unknown.

The farmer sits around indoors, when he has done his evening chores, and finished all the daily grind, and talks of plans he has in mind.

“Amanda Jane,” he tells his wife, the faithful partner of his life, “the time has come when we can build; the strongbox is with rubles filled. It hasn’t been the best of years, but I have sold a bunch of steers, and, too, a galaxy of swine, and quite a wad of dough is mine. We’ll build the house we long have planned, with modern things on every hand, with weather strips and folding doors, and walnut stairs and rosewood floors.”

“Now, Hiram, you are safe and sane,” remarks the glad Amanda Jane. “For twenty weary years, alack, we’ve lived in this old dingy shack; we’ve built fine shelter for the cows, and sheds palatial for the sows, and gorgeous stables for the mules, and lived in this old shack, like fools. Now let us have a dwelling fine, and not a dugout twelve by nine. And, Hiram, bear this thought in mind: When buying, do not go it blind. I’ve talked with women who have homes which are for beauty simply pomes, and they have told me many a time, that cheap john woodwork is a crime. With it your house will be a frost, regardless of the roll it cost.”

“Don’t worry, wife,” old Hiram sighs; “methinks you’ll find your husband wise; I’ve had that matter long in mind, and I shall buy the Curtis kind.”

HOUSING THE HELP

I tried to sell a load of slabs to Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs. He owns a farm some nine miles long, and twice as wide--unless I’m wrong; I am not sure about its size, but it is big, or some one lies.

“I cannot blow myself for slabs,” said Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs; “with forty kinds of grief I’m filled, I’m not in shape this year to build. When one is loaded to the ears with cares and woes, and doubts and fears, he’s in no mood to talk of planks, or building stunts, you bet your shanks.

“The government,” said Mr. Dabbs, “is on the farmers keeping tabs; it looks to us to raise the wheat, that half the blooming world shall eat. It looks to us for corn and hay, and succotash and beans and whey. We farmers want to raise the stuff; we surely have desire enough; we have the land, we have the mules, we have the seed, we have the tools, but where in thunder shall we get the laborers, to toil and sweat? We cannot keep men on the farm; the life appears to have no charm. I need a half a dozen hands to cultivate my fertile lands; I’d give them work the whole year round, if men of muscle could be found.”

“It is a problem old and hoar,” I said, and sat down on the floor. “It is a problem that will grow more frightful as the sad years go, unless you farmers realize that laborers are human guys. They want to live a normal life, each with his fireside and his wife, and not be packed in garrets bare up forty miles of winding stair.

“If I were farming, Mr. Dabbs, instead of selling rosewood slabs, I’d build some nifty little shacks, to house my toiling Jills and Jacks. I’d say to men I hired, ‘You see, you do not have to live with me; you have your house in which to dwell, a garden and a cow and well, a rooster and a Dorking hen, which things appeal to honest men.’

“When you take up that sort of thing, your men will stay with you, by jing.”

Then Mr. Dabbs sat down by me. “There may be truth in that,” said he. “I’m blamed if I don’t try it out, so let us see some plans, old scout.”

We figured there for half a day, and when the patron drove away, he hauled a load of joists and jambs, and seemed as chipper as nine clams.

CLASSY HOMES

The barber who is bald as blazes can’t sell me tonic for my hair, and all his fine and ringing phrases strike me as merely heated air. The tailor who is looking shabby can’t sell me clothes, howe’er he tries; his eloquence seems vain and flabby, his course of conduct is not wise.

The jeweler, whose watch is gaining, or losing, seven hours a day, might spend a week or two explaining his wondrous skill--I’d go my way.

If I were selling battle-axes, I’d see my own the best in town, as slick and clean and smooth as wax is, a thing of fair and wide renown.

One lumber man is always telling what kind of homes the folks should build, and he lives in a rocky dwelling, with bargain counter fixtures filled. And men who listen to his spieling remark, “Why don’t you build, yourself? Your home is punk, from floor to ceiling, from kitchen sink to pantry shelf.”

The lumber man, more than all others, should show his faith in what he sells, should demonstrate, to men and brothers, that his own home is wearing bells. Then he can say to John and Alice, who think of putting up a home, “Come out and see my little palace, examine it, from porch to dome. Of goodly points it has a number, I think it good and up to date; it shows what one can do with lumber, if he has got his head on straight.”

The workman who is always fussing can’t ply for me the monkey wrench; the preacher who is always cussing can’t lead me to the mourner’s bench.

The lumberman whose home is rocky can’t tell me what I ought to build; though he be eloquent and talky, the force of all he says is killed.

NECESSARY GOODS

So many folks are selling things we really do not need! They sell us pups and spiral springs, and patent chicken feed. A dozen times a day or more I have to drop my pen; some chap is ringing at the door, to sell a setting hen. A gent of rather seedy looks came to my shack today, to sell me fifty-seven books--the works of Bertha Clay. And one is selling china eyes, one deals in pewter spoons, and one would sell me whisker dyes, another, musty prunes.

I never waddle through the woods but some one comes along, and tries to sell me useless goods, with tiresome dance and song. I’m weary of the man who yells of jimcracks gone to seed; how stately is the man who sells the goods men really need! I watch the lumberman go past, upon his useful chores, to sell a mariner a mast, or fit a house with doors; his boards and beams, of seasoned wood, for helpful arts are made; he does our social fabric good when he builds up his trade.

There’s nothing in the lumber store superfluous or vain; you do not seek that dealer’s door fool doodads to obtain. And every time he sells a bill, improvements there will be; the coin he puts into his till helps the community. And when his goods are in demand, the better times have come, your town will flourish and expand, the wheels of commerce hum.

I’m tired of buying pumpkin trees, and postholes by the crate, and ostrich eggs, and swarms of bees, and tinhorn real estate. Hereafter I shall blow my roll for articles worth while, a peck of lime, a load of coal, a good large lumber pile.

THE MIXER

I know a man who deals in planks, and he has money in nine banks. He has a busy lumber booth, where he makes business hum, in sooth. And when the day of toil is o’er, he might go home and rest and snore, and put his feet upon a chair, and talk about his load of care. But when he’s had his evening meal, and read the valued _Daily Squeal_, he says, “Methinks I’ll go down town, and see what’s up, or maybe down.”

He takes a hand in everything that makes our home town move and swing. If boosters hold a jamboree, this lumber dealer there you’ll see, and he will on his hind legs stand, and help to boost, to beat the band.

If there’s a wedding at the kirk, this lumber man will leave his work, and reach the scene with active stride, and he’s the first to kiss the bride.

When we arrange a big parade, you see this lumber man arrayed in all his panoply and pomp, and down the street he’ll proudly romp.

If we decide to lynch a gent, some agent for a patent tent, or one who’s sold us mining shares, or double action easy chairs, that lumber man is right on deck, and puts the rope around his neck.

I hear folks say, “That lumber chap, has put this village on the map. If we had twenty men like him, the town would sure be in the swim. He is the first man, every time, to help to make things hump and climb.”

The business man who hopes to win must boost the town he’s living in. You cannot do the hermit stunt, and hope to travel at the front. Get next to all that’s going on, mix in with Richard, James and John, and help along the town’s affairs, and leave the grouches in their lairs.

STAIRWAYS

Some years ago I built a house in which I settled, with my spouse. It was a gorgeous shack, indeed; the kind of house of which you read. For such a house I’d always yearned, and so I said, “Expense be derned! I want the best that coin will buy; my dwelling place must stack up high. I want a dwelling that will stand till I’m so old I should be canned.”

I said, “I want a splendid stair, a stairway that’s beyond compare; the kind you read about in books, with banisters and window nooks.”

And so we built a noble stair, and it was surely passing fair; and guests who came to spend the night, when viewing it, expressed delight, and said it surely took the cake; it was a bird, and no mistake.

But when the stair was five years old its antics made my trilbys cold. It warped and twisted like the deuce, till half the steps and rails were loose, it creaked and crackled, as in pain, and warped and bent and warped again. It took a circus acrobat to climb my stairway after that.

Then came a neighbor to my door, who’d built a hundred shacks or more. He viewed my stair and shed some weeps, and said, “That is a frost, for keeps. You’d better take it out from there and get yourself a Curtis stair. The wood the Curtis people use will ne’er its right proportions lose; it will not wind around, I wist, like some dadblamed contortionist. For it is seasoned to a hair; there is no reckless guesswork there.

“The Curtis trademark on a stair just means that grief won’t travel there. You have a stairway that will last until your earthly woes are past, and you are playing golden lyres, or heaping brimstone on the fires.

“Your warped old stairway yet will wreck some fellow’s back or break his neck, so pull it down, I humbly beg, before there is a broken leg. Then get the Curtis seasoned wood, and have a stairway staunch and good, and you will bless me every day for showing you the proper way.”

And now a noble Curtis stair adds grace and comfort to my lair; I never find it on the blink, it doesn’t warp or split or shrink.

ALL THE TIME

This is the burden of my rhyme: Be nice and pleasant all the time. Some men are only sweet and nice, when they desire to get the price. The lumber men at Bungtown hear that I intend, some time this year, to build a handsome Gothic shed, all up to date and painted red.

At ordinary times these gents don’t smile at me worth twenty cents. They pass me by and do not say, “How is your liver?” or “Good day!” But since they’ve heard that I expect to build a shed that’s all correct, a modern shed with wooden doors and handsome knotholes in the floors, they’re so polite and smooth and sweet, they give me fantods in my feet.

They do not win me with their grins; such work is coarse, and seldom wins. If men would sell their laths and lime, they should be pleasant all the time, and not, like some cheap candidate, just when they think ’twill pay the freight.

I’ll buy the lumber for my shed, when I have got the coin ahead, from dealers who are pleasant lads e’en when they are not after scads. There are such dealers in our town, and no sane man would turn them down. I meet them nearly every day, and talk with them of hogs and hay, and bats and cats and curleycues, and ships and synagogues and shoes.

They do not seem to care a red who sells the lumber for my shed; they’re always pleasant and polite, they hand me smiles and treat me right.

So when I wish to buy a plank, I take some pennies from the bank, and cheerfully I blow the price with men who can’t help being nice.

And when the Bungtown fellows know what I have done, they’ll droop in woe; they’ll look on me with moody scorn, and wish I never had been born. Their souls can’t reach the heights sublime; they can’t be pleasant all the time.

HOUSES SCARCE

Oft I hear discordant slogans, hear the loud and sad lament; men are wearing out their brogans hunting houses they can rent. Every village, town and city sees the same discouraged crew; and it seems to me a pity that good houses are so few.

In my native burg, Empory, I see women chasing round, and they tell the same old story--houses simply can’t be found. And the same sad word is spoken everywhere I chance to roam; from Topeka to Hoboken folks are hunting for a home.

When they’re sick and tired of chasing, when their souls with woe are filled, maybe they will do some bracing; maybe they’ll decide to build. Rents are higher now than ever, and the prices won’t slump back, and that man is really clever who will build himself a shack.

“But the cost!” I hear men yawping; and they put up thoughtless roars, for they never have been shopping at the modern lumber stores. Building goods today are cheaper than all other goods you buy; all commodities are steeper--ask the lumber dealer nigh.

Monied men are often questing for gold bricks, and dern the price; always ready for investing in blue sky and pickled ice. If they’d build a lot of houses they might dwell in Easy street, where the catawampus browses, and the dingbat’s song is sweet. Every time they’d build a dwelling crowds would come, and still increase, crying, clamoring and yelling, begging for a five-year lease.

There’s no better proposition than this thing of building homes, and the fact should find position in the plutocratic domes.

And the man with modest bundle should be renting nevermore; he should take his wad and trundle to the lumber dealer’s store.

There should be a boom in building such as we have never seen; palaces with ornate gilding, modest homes, all painted green.

FLOORS

The Eskimo has floors of ice, and probably he thinks them nice, and strictly up to date; but if there ever came a thaw they’d be the worst you ever saw, and that’s as sure as fate. The Arab has his floor of sand; I have no doubt he thinks it grand, a floor beyond compare; but sand is full of bugs and ants, and they climb up a fellow’s pants, when he sits in a chair.

The Mexican has floors of dirt, and floors of that sort will not hurt, so long as weather’s dry; but when there comes a season wet such floors are not the one best bet, which no one can deny.

In olden times men built their homes with battlements and towers and domes, and ornaments of gold; but all the floors were made of stone, and they made people sigh and groan, they were so hard and cold.

And then with rushes they were strewn, to make them warmer to the shoon, and also to the feet; and those stale rushes would decay; their scent would drive the folks away, in agonized retreat.

It took uncounted years of toil and planning by the midnight oil to dope out modern floors; the floors on which we dance and walk, and sing and cuss and wildly talk of hoarders and such bores.

The floors on which we spend our lives, and train our kids, and beat our wives, are surely handsome things; be they of color light or dark, we proudly view them and remark, “They’re good enough for kings.”

Your mansion might have jasper walls, the finest painting in its halls that artists can produce, and onyx stairs and marble doors, but if it had no modern floors ’twould be a poor excuse.

Good hardwood floors make life a pome; they beautify your happy home as nothing else can do; your lumber dealer has the best; the years have given it the test that means so much to you.

DOORS

While doing here our earthly chores, we’re going in and out of doors; doors have a part in all we do, until our little trip is through; and then who knows what sort of door we’ll enter on the other shore?

If I am welcome at your shack you gladly swing the door clear back, and say, “Come in, you blamed old skate, and stay six months, or maybe eight!” But if I sell “The Works of Poe,” you ope the door an inch or so, and cry, “Go chase yourself, gadzooks! We do not want your tinhorn books!”

Oh, doors are good for many things; they’re used by peasants and by kings; the humblest hut has three or two, and palaces have quite a few. And I recall a bitter day, when I climbed on a dappled gray, a horse that wasn’t brought up right; it liked to kick and buck and bite; it threw me off, in wanton style, then sat on me for quite a while. I was so crippled, bruised and sore, men took me home upon a door. It shows how useful doors can be; I always carry two or three.

We’re always viewing doors, you know; they face us everywhere we go; on doors we knock, at doors we wait, and if they’re handsome, smooth and straight, they strike us as a work of art, they’re soothing to the mind and heart. But if they’re warped and out of plumb, and cracked and cheap and on the bum, we think, “The owner doesn’t heed how much his dwelling runs to seed.”

I size up people by their doors; not by the rugs upon their floors.

There’s nothing looks so dad-blamed punk as some cheap door that’s warped and shrunk.

The Curtis hardwood doors are great; they’re always true and fine and straight; their beauty gladdens every eye, and years don’t make that beauty fly. They’re built by experts, and each door is planned to sell a hundred more; each one’s an ad for all the rest, and every Curtis door’s the best.

Oh, I could write a whole lot more, but some one’s rapping at the door.

BUILDING A HOUSE

I built a house, erect and square, its basement touched the ground; and all my neighbors gathered there, and said it should be round. “Square houses long are out of date,” remarked old Jabez Black, “and no one but a fossil skate would build him such a shack.”

“I see your shingles are of wood,” said Johnsing, with a grin; “you ought to know they are no good--they should be made of tin. Your house is sure the bummest job a man could find in town; I’ve half a mind to raise a mob, and come and tear it down. The porch roof has too steep a drop, it makes a wretched show; the basement should be built on top, the garret down below.”

“You surely must have lost your head,” exclaimed old Captain Bean, “to go and paint your mansion red, with trimmings of pea green. A person’s eyes it fairly slams; the man who sees that paint will think he has the James H. Jams, and he’ll be apt to faint. If you had made it pink and blue, it would have hit the spot; but you have chosen such a hue as makes the neighbors hot.”

“I see your chimney is of brick,” said Colonel Sassafras; “and such a bungle makes me sick--it should be built of glass. Glass chimneys now are all the rage in Paris and in Rome, but you’re away behind the age, when you put up a home.”

“Upon a pivot,” said Judge Ace, “it should be built, just so, then you could turn it round to face most all the winds that blow.”

They all agreed that such a shack was never built before; it all was wrong and out of whack, from roof to cellar door; except the woodwork--that was grand, and beautiful and slick; they saw it had the CURTIS brand, and so they could not kick.

THE GLADSOME SPIEL