"Well, I'll show you," and here I put my sharpener on the counter. "You know," I said, "when a man sharpens a pencil what a lot of wood and lead he cuts away?"

"Cuts away? Why, here they hack 'em all to pieces! But what's that contraption?"

"I'll show you. Just lend me a pencil." He pa.s.sed over a pencil that looked as if the wood at the end had been bitten off, instead of cut off.

Blenkhorn was watching my actions rather curiously. I put the pencil in the sharpener, gave it two or three turns, and out it came with the point nicely rounded and sharpened.

"You notice," I said, "that it didn't cut away any of the lead at all, only the wood."

"H'm," he returned, and then he walked away and came back with a half a dozen more pencils. "Let's see it sharpen some more."

"Go ahead, try it yourself, Mr. Blenkhorn."

I held the outfit firmly and he sharpened one after the other.

"H'm," he said again. "How much is that thing?"

"Only a dollar."

"You can buy a lot of pencils for a dollar," he mused.

"That's true," I replied, "but you'll save a lot of dollars by the use of this." I had got that from the chapter in the booklet headed: "Answers to objections."

"Send me one of those, Black," said Blenkhorn. "I'll try it."

"Thank you, Mr. Blenkhorn," I said. "By the way, do you want any butcher's supplies now. I have some mighty good knives."

"No, I have all of those I want. Oh, the missis did tell me to go down to Stigler's to buy a good short-handled ax for splitting kindling."

"I'll save you the trouble and send it down for you, right away."

"How much are they worth?"

"Dollar and a half."

"The last one I got cost me only a dollar."

"How long did it last?"

"Not long. The blamed head kept coming off."

"Well, I'll sell you one for $1.50, and guarantee the head won't come off, and if it does I'll replace it for you free of charge."

Without further words, he went to the cash register, took out $2.50 and handed it to me, saying with a grin:

"You're right after business, aren't you, Black? Good luck to you."

Well, I found that this method worked well, and I sold five sharpeners during the day--six in fact, for when I got back to the store I found that they had sold two more, and one of them had been to Blakely, the lawyer, on whom I had called earlier in the day, and who had said he might get one later on. Evidently he had changed his mind, and dropped into the store when he was pa.s.sing by. In addition to the sale of the sharpeners, I had sold $11.00 worth of other things. That was going some, wasn't it?

And to think, if it hadn't been for that little book, I would never have started the plan!

Well, we all seemed to have the pencil sharpener craze, and I was glad of it, and determined to push pencil sharpeners all I could, if only as a kind of thank-you for their putting me onto a new channel of getting business.

I met Barlow as I was coming home. I told him what I had done, and how I had got the order for the ax which Stigler would have had. He laughed heartily at that, and said he was very glad to hear it.

"I think you're going to make a real big man yet, Dawson," he said. "Is Stigler still hurting you with his mark-down prices?"

"Yes, he is," I confessed. "But I think I've got a plan that's going to put it all over him."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to start using trading stamps."

"What-at!" he said, in a surprised tone.

"Yes," I continued. "The man was to have come last Thursday; but he had to leave town Wednesday night, and he wired me that he was coming up to-morrow, and I'm going to take them up."

Barlow stopped short in the street, swung me around until I was facing him, and said in a stern tone:

"Young man, do you know what a fool thing you are trying to do?"

"Fool thing nothing!" I returned. "And I don't see how you are able to judge that." I rather felt that he was b.u.t.ting in where he had no concern.

"You're right," he said, "it's no concern of mine at all. But for heaven's sake, lad, think twice before you tangle yourself up with anything like that."

CHAPTER XXII

STIGLER PREPARES ANOTHER BLOW

When I told Fellows about my trading stamp idea, he suggested that I think over the question once more, before taking them up, and he asked if he could be present at the interview when the Garter trading stamp man came around.

It was hard to tell what to do. I thought trading stamps were a good thing; but Fellows of the Flaxon Advertising Agency apparently didn't like them, and Barlow didn't either. When I talked it over with Betty, first she said, "Don't touch them at all," then she said, "I don't know, try them!" Finally she said she didn't know what to think of them. The decision was, after all, up to me and no one seemed to know much about them.

Well, I agreed to think it over again, and when Bulder, the Garter trading stamp man, came, I put him off until the next day. Fellows was going to be there when he came, and I thought I'll let those two have it out and put my money on the winner.

Stigler was up to a new dodge.

Until the first of the month there had been a small men's furnishing store next door to me. Well, Dorman, who ran the store, had ended by running it to the wall. Poor fellow, he'd been in that location for over forty years, and at the time was a man of nearly seventy. He never had done much business, at least not since my knowledge of him, and, towards the last, the place had been getting seedier and seedier each month, and finally he had had to give it up. He told the Mater--he knew her quite well--that he never had made over $20.00 a week in the store, and, after paying up all his debts, he had less than half the money he had originally put into the business.

"I'd have been much better off clerking for some one else," he had told the Mater, "for I would have saved a little money. As it is, here I am, three score and ten, and, if I live two years more, I'll have to go to the poorhouse, I suppose."

Old Dorman had made me think pretty seriously when he got out. I was wondering how many more small storekeepers were in Dorman's position; how many of them had bungled along from year to year, making a bare existence; I hoped I could do better than that! It had made me feel the need of not only keeping up-to-date, but up-to-to-morrow in business ideas. I remembered what Barker, the big hardware man in Boston, had said to me when I asked him why there were so many little stores, after he had mentioned that there were a lot of little stores which were not represented in the a.s.sociation.

"The reason," he returned, with a sad shake of his head, "is that the men who run them are little. They wear blinkers all their lives. Their outlook is extremely narrow. They never grasp what is going on around them. They don't keep up to date in their ideas and methods of doing business. They never grow, but remain little all their lives."