impecunious, and did not wish
to pay any more salaries; but "mercy tempers the blast to the shorn
lamb," and they persuaded me, by a tender of large profits on their
Worcester's Dictionaries, to strike out on my own hook and endeavor
to induce a reluctant public to buy these instead of the popular
dictionaries written by "Noah Webster who came over in the ark."

The special prices granted by the publishers enabled me to undersell
the wholesalers, and by securing their adoption as regular text-books
by school boards, I made more money than ever before in my life,
sometimes from $25 to $100 per day, consequently the firm finding I
was filling the markets and my own pockets so that they had no sales
at regular prices, hired me at a liberal salary as representative of
all their publications.

In this business I won my "double stars," although the competition was
intense. I often found as many as twenty agents at the same time and
in the same town, log-rolling with school committees for the adoption
of their books, the merits of the publications "cut but little ice."
Nearly every school official "had his price," wanting to know what
there was in his vote for him, and the agent who best concealed the
bribery hook by dining and wining teachers and committeemen, filling
their libraries with complimentary books and their pockets with secret
commissions, "caught the most fish."

When among Romans, I was, much to my disgust, obliged to do as
Romans did. I would often go to cities where my opponent's readers or
arithmetics had been adopted the night before, point out the defects
of rival publications, give an unabridged dictionary to each official,
offer a ten per cent. commission to the "king pin," take the board in
a hack to their headquarters, secure a reconsideration, telegraph for
my books, and the next day with express wagons and helpers, put our
readers into every school in the town.

This was sharp practice, prices were cut, until finally, we gave new
books in even exchange for old ones, trusting to future sales to
reimburse us, but when they needed another supply, they would swap
even with another publisher, so that our bread cast upon the waters
never returned.

We often secured "louder calls" for influential teachers and clergymen
in reciprocation for their votes, bought anything they had to sell at
their own prices until many publishers became bankrupt; the big fish
swallowing the little ones, and then came the su