ted to have my
services as their agent. Amongst them, I remember, was a German firm
which had quite a wonderful turning lathe which could turn out table
legs, ornamental posts, banisters for staircases, and in fact all sorts
of wooden legs and posts, in marvellous quick time. Then there was an
American firm with a very reliable and still cheap line of watches, and
so on. But I was not made aware that these firms had already imported
large stocks of their particular goods and were selling them on their own
account, so that there were not many opportunities left of doing further
business for the time being. In the meantime I spent quite a fair sum of
money in advertising their goods, for which, no doubt, they were inwardly
thankful.

Sitting in my office one day I had a visit from a gentleman, who asked me
if I would act as agent for what he informed me was a sure and good line
to sell. I told him it depended on what it was. To my surprise he said,
"Yorkshire hams." I looked at him, wondering whether he was all right in
the head. He noticed my hesitation in answering him, but said:

"All right. The position is this. I am closely in touch with many of the
boats arriving in harbour from England. Most of them are now bringing
certain quantities of Yorkshire hams by way of a little speculation
amongst some of the ship's company. Knowing most of them, they have asked
me if I could place their hams. I have no time myself to do so, but I
thought a firm like yours would take it on."

Well, it didn't appear to me there was any harm in selling "Yorkshire
hams" and getting a good commission out of them, and, at any rate, there
were always people who would eat "Yorkshire hams," and if the market
wasn't glutted they could soon be disposed of. The terms of my commission
were fixed up, and my visitor undertook to start delivering the hams at
the offices in a couple of days. I may tell you that there was a back
entrance to the offices from a side street, and as the offices were
fairly large, one room was set aside for the storage of the hams. It was
to be his business to deliver them and store them. We began operations at
once, and I succeeded in getting orders fairly easily. I discovered
afterwards that the reason of this was that my price was lower than the
actual market price. Having no previous experience in selling hams, and,
as a matter of fact, of selling anything, I had no suspicion that there
might be something wrong in connex