"
"I shall never forget my first experience," said my old friend Jim, as
we all lighted fresh cigars--having forgotten the Dutch pictures and
the black oak furnishings.
"I had made a little flyer for the house to pick up a bill of opening
stock out in Iowa. They all thought in the office that the bill wasn't
worth going after, so they sent me; but I landed a twenty-five hundred
dollar order without slashing an item, a thing no other salesman up to
that time had ever done, so the old man called me in the office and
gave me a job just as soon as I came back.
"I started out with two hundred dollars expense money. The roll of
greenbacks the cashier handed me looked as big as a bale of hay. I
made a couple of towns the first two days and did business in both of
them, keeping up the old lick of not cutting a price.
"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the
main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go
to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out
around the hotel at Grand Island.
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