"

"Thank you, I will," the prospect answers and the interview is over.

Did the salesman act wisely? Would he have gained anything by proving
that his house was superior to Hicks and Hicks? Not if the customer was
worth having. This salesman never forgets that his part of the job is to
build up business for his own firm, and not to tear down business for
other firms. As it stands, he has in this case established a feeling of
good will for the house he represents, and has placed it in such a light
that if the rival concern should be afflicted with a strike or a fire or
any of a hundred or two disasters which might lessen or suspend its
output, the customer will probably turn to the salesman's house. And if
Hicks and Hicks should sell out or go into bankruptcy the salesman will
have won for his own house a steady customer of great value.

_In the Sleeping Car._ The wise traveling man--and our salesman is
wise--always engages sleeping accommodations on the train in advance.
This time he has the lower berth in No. 9.

When he comes in to take his seat he finds that a woman has the upper
berth in the same compartment. He is reading a newspaper and she is
reading a magazine. He says nothing until toward evening, and then he
offers to exchange places with her. She thanks him cordially, explains
that she was late in securing a berth and that this was all she could
get. She is very grateful and the transfer is made.

He goes into the smoking car and meets there several men who are talking
together. He joins them and the conversation runs along pleasantly
enough until one of the number begins to retail dirty stories. Some of
the others try to switch him off to another subject but he is wound up
and nothing short of a sledge hammer will stop him until he has run
down. Our salesman has a healthy loathing for this sort of thing. He has
a good fund of stories himself--most traveling men have--and in the
course of his journeyings he has heard many of the kind that the
foul-minded man in the smoking car is retailing with such delight. He
never retells stories of that nature, and he never, when he can avoid
it, listens to them. He knows that he cannot stop the man, but after a
little while he gets up quietly and leaves. Another man follows him and
the two stand on the rear platform of the train until time to go to bed.

Men who are traveling together often converse without knowing one
another's names, and it is correct that they s