ct to succeed with a fifty-dollar stock then, when I was
unable to get along with several times that amount years before.

I told her I thought she was mistaken about my stock in trade, and
assured her that my present stock was fifty times larger than when I
tried it before. In considerable astonishment she asked me what I meant.

"I mean that _experience_ should be invoiced as stock in trade; and as I
have had lots of it since my first experiment, I am going to fill up two
trays in my sample case with jewelry, and in each one of the empty trays
I'll put a card with the word 'experience' written on it; and if a
merchant laughs at my goods I'll explain that my stock consists of
jewelry and experience, but that I am only selling the jewelry, and
keeping the experience for my own use."

This plan was carried out; and in every instance when I called on a
merchant and displayed all of my trays on his counter, he would take the
cards up one after the other, and after reading the word "experience" on
each and every one, would ask its meaning. I always explained that I had
more experience than capital, and as I valued it very highly, I
considered it perfectly legitimate to figure it as stock in trade. This
generally brought a smile from them, and as a rule seemed to work to my
benefit. At any rate, I sold jewelry to almost every dealer I called
upon.

As I was then owing my wholesaler fifty dollars for the first bill, I
at once ordered several small packages sent on ahead of me C.O.D. to
different towns, and as I came to them would take them up.

This gave me a chance for some "tall hus'ling," and I made the most of
it.

I began by showing up my jewelry early in the morning to clerks or
porters at the hotel, and in the evening before retiring, to the hotel
girls.

As soon as the stores were opened I visited every merchant in town, and
sold to Jewelers, Grocers, dealers in Dry Goods and Hardware, Druggists,
Restaurants, Milliners, in short, to every one who had a show-case.

At noon I would open up in the hotel office, ostensibly to arrange my
jewelry, but for no other purpose than to attract the attention of
boarders or guests to my stock of goods.

Whenever they asked to buy I would assume an air of independence and
indifference, and quote the price of every article by the dozen, and was
sure to mention that it was the wholesale price. Of course almost every
one was anxious to buy at wholesale, and I had no trouble i