of an assignee. The outlook
was not propitious for a large sale: a new book by an unknown author
published by an assignee. But the salesman believed in the book,
believed in it with judgment and enthusiasm. "I found," he said, in
telling the story, "that the trade to a man believed in me. It
affected me deeply to feel that my years of straight dealing had not
been wasted. The booksellers backed me up, bought all the copies I
asked them to buy,--and I asked largely,--with the result that I sold
ten thousand copies in advance of publication. The firm has sold since
over two hundred thousand copies of that book and its creditors
received a hundred cents on the dollar."

It would seem an axiom that a man selling books should have at least a
bowing acquaintance with their contents, yet I have heard salesmen
argue hotly in favor of the old-time salesman who sold books as he
would sell shoes or hats. Such a one was selling a novel to a Boston
bookseller. He had not taken the trouble to read the book, but had
been told by his firm that it was a good story. Flushed with the
vehemence of his own argument for a large order, he floundered about
among such vague statements as: "You can't go to sleep until you have
finished it! It's great! A corking story! Can't lay the book down!
Unable to turn out the light until you have read the last line!"

"But what's it about?" quickly interrupted the customer, suspecting
that the traveller had not read the book.

"It's about--it's about a dollar and a quarter," was the quick retort.

Perhaps here we find the substitute for the reading that maketh a full
man. Repartee of this sort is disarming, and the quickness of wit that
prompts it is not one of the least useful attributes of salesmanship.
To carry the moral a step farther, it is only fair to say that the
nimble salesman has had the wit to get out of the publishing business
into another line of industry that, if reports are to be believed, has
made him independent.

The commercial traveller who sells books has no fault to find with the
people with whom he deals. By the very nature of his calling the
bookseller is a man of reading and culture; now and then among them
you find a man of rare culture. So genuinely friendly are the
relations existing between seller and purchaser that a travelling man
has the feeling that he is making a pleasure trip among friends. Such
relations are no mean asset to the salesman, although they are not
whol