ttle hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud
position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house
atmosphere of Ohio Street--or had so loomed until the advent of the
reckless bookkeeper--he was so small a part of the office force of
Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing
multiplied by itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure,
for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times;
but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his
envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any
office-boy who did not stutter could have held his job.

When at seven forty-five Miss Harris appeared upon the porch with her
hat and gloves and two-dollar-ticket air, and tripped gaily away in
company with Mr. Gross, young Mitchell realized bitterly that the cost
of living had increased and that it was up to him to raise his salary
or lose his lady.

He recalled Gross's words at supper-time, and wondered if there really
could be a science to business; if there could be anything to success
except hard work. Mr. Comer, in his weekly talks to the office
force, had repeatedly said so--whence the origin of the bookkeeper's
warmed-over wisdom--but Mitchell's duties were so simple and so
constricted as to allow no opening for science, or so, at least, it
seemed to him. How could he be scientific, how could he find play for
genius when he sat at the end of a telephone wire and answered routine
questions from a card? Every day the General Railway Sales Manager
gave him a price-list of the commodities which C. & M. handled, and
when an inquiry came over the 'phone all he was required, all he
was permitted, to do was to read the figures and to quote time of
delivery. If this resulted in an order the Sales Manager took the
credit. An open quotation, on the other hand, made Mitchell the
subject of brusque criticism for offering a target to competitors, and
when he lost an order he was the goat, not the General Railway Sales
Manager.

No one around the office was too lowly to exact homage from the
quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of
criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one
that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if
salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must
be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by
acquiring it. What if he w