Tales of the Road Part 8

"Raise it fifty," spoke up number four.

The other three "saw the raise."

"Three Jacks," said the opener.

"Beats me," said number two.

"Three queens here," said number three.

"Bobtail," spoke up number four.

"Makes no difference what you have," broke in number three. "I've the top hand, but the whole pot belongs to the boy. The low hand, though, shall go out and get the berries."

As the train pulled out, the little barefoot drummer with $6.50 hobbled across the muddy street, the proudest boy in all Oregon; but he was not so happy as were his five big brothers in the receding car.

Brethren, did I say. Yes, Brethren! To the man on the road, every one he meets is his brother--no more, no less. He feels that he is as good as the governor, that he is no better than the boy who s.h.i.+nes his shoes. The traveling man, if he succeeds, soon becomes a member of the Great Fraternity--the Brotherhood of Man. The ensign of this order is the Helping Hand.

I once overheard one of the boys tell how he had helped an old Frenchman.

"I was down in Southern Idaho last trip," said he. "While waiting at the station for a train to go up to Hailey, an old man came to the ticket window and asked how much the fare was to b.u.t.te. The agent told him the amount--considerably more than ten dollars.

"'_Mon Dieu!_ Is it so far as that?' said the old man. '_Eh bien!_ (very well) I must find some work.'

"But he was a chipper old fellow. I had noticed him that morning offering to run a foot race with the boys. He wasn't worried a bit when the agent told him how much the fare to b.u.t.te was. He was really comical, merely shrugging his shoulders and smiling when he said: 'Very well, I must find some work.' Cares lighten care.

"The old man, leaving the ticket window, sat down on a bench, made the sign of a cross and took out a prayer book. When he had finished reading I went over and sat beside him. I talked with him. He was one of Nature's n.o.blemen without a t.i.tle. He was a French Canadian. He came to Montana early in the sixties and worked in the mines. Wages were high, but he married and his wife became an invalid; doctors and medicines took nearly all of his money. He struggled on for over thirty years, taking money out of the ground and putting it into pill boxes. Finally he was advised to take his wife to a lower alt.i.tude. He moved to the coast and settled in the Willamette Valley, in Oregon.

His wife became better at first; then she grew sick again. More medicine!

"Well, sir, do you know that old man--over seventy years of age--was working his way back to b.u.t.te to hunt work in the mines again. I spoke French to him and asked him how much money he had. 'Not much,' said he--and he took out his purse. How much do you suppose the old man had in it? Just thirty-five cents! I had just spent half a dollar for cigars and tossed them around. To see that old man, separated from his wife, having to hunt for work to get money so he could go where he could hunt more work that he might only buy medicine for a sick old woman and with just three dimes and a nickel in his purse--was too much for me! I said to myself: 'I'll cut out smoking for two days and give what I would spend to the old man.'

"I put a pair of silver dollars into the old man's purse to keep company with his three dimes and one nickel. It made them look like orphans that had found a home. '_Mon Dieu! Monsieur, vous etes un ange du ciel. Merci. Merci._' (My G.o.d, sir, you are an angel from Heaven. Thank you. Thank you.) said the old man. 'But you must give me your address and let me send back the money!'

"I asked my old friend to give me his name and told him that I would send him my address to b.u.t.te so he would be _sure_ to get it; that he might lose it if he put it in his pocket.

"He told me his name. I gave him a note to the superintendent at Pocatello, asking him to pa.s.s the old Frenchman to b.u.t.te. We talked until my train started. Every few sentences, the old man would say: '_Que Dieu vous benisse, mon enfant!_' (May G.o.d bless you, my boy!)

"As I stood on the back end of my train, pulling away from the station, the old man looked at me saying:

"'Adieu! Adieu!' Then, looking up into the sky, he made a sign of the cross and said: '_Que Dieu vous protege, mon enfant!_' (May G.o.d protect you, my boy!)

"That blessing was worth a copper mine."

CHAPTER VI.

HOW TO GET ON THE ROAD.

Since starting on the road many have asked me: "How can I get a job on the road?"

Young men and old men have asked me this--clerks, stock boys, merchants and students. Even wives have asked me how to find places for their husbands.

Let's clear the ground of dead timber. Old men of any sort and young men who haven't fire in their eyes and ginger in their feet need not apply. The "Old Man," who sits in the head office sizes up the man who wishes to go out on the road and spend a whole lot of the firm's money for traveling expenses with a great deal more care than the dean of a college measures the youth who comes to enter school. The dean thinks: "Well, maybe we can make something out of this boy, dull as he is.

We'll try." But the business man says: "That fellow is no good. He can't sell goods. What's the use of wasting money on him and covering a valuable territory with a dummy?"

On the other hand, the heads of wholesale houses are ever on the watch for bright young men. This is no stale preachment, but a live fact!

There are hundreds of road positions open in every city in America.

Almost any large firm would put on ten first cla.s.s men to-morrow, but they _can't find the men_.

The "stock" is the best training school for the road--the stock boy is the drummer student. Once in a while an old merchant, tiring of the routine of the retail business, may get a "commission job"--that is, he may find a position to travel for some firm, usually a "snide outfit"--if he will agree to pay his own traveling expenses and accept for his salary a percentage of his sales s.h.i.+pped. Beware, my friend, of the "commission job!" Reliable firms seldom care to put out a man who does not "look good enough" to justify them in at least guaranteeing him a salary he can live on. They know that if a man feels he is going to _live_ and not lag behind, he will work better.

The commission salesman is afraid to spend his own money; yet, were he to have the firm's money to spend, many a man who fails would succeed.

Once in a while a retail clerk may get a place on the road, but the "Old Man" does not look on the clerk with favor. The clerk has had things come his way too easy. His customers come to him; the man on the road must _go after his customers_. It is the stock boy who has the best show to get on the road.

The stock boy learns his business from the ground up or better, as the Germans say, "from the house out." If one young man cannot become a surgeon without going through the dissecting room, then another cannot become a successful drummer without having worked in stock. The merchant, who oft-times deals in many lines, wishes to buy his goods from the man who knows his business; and unless a man knows his business he would better never start on the road.

But, my dear boy, to merely know your business is not all. You may know that this razor is worth $12.00 a dozen and that one $13.50; that this handle is bone and that one celluloid; but that won't get you on the road. _You must have a good front._ I do not mean by this that you must have just exactly 990 hairs on each side of the "part" on your head; that your shoes must be s.h.i.+ned, your trousers creased, your collar clean and your necktie just so. Neatness is a "without-which- not;" but there must be more--a boy must work hard, be polite, honest, full of force, bright, quick, frank, good-natured. The "Old Man" may keep to sweep the floor a lazy, s.h.i.+ftless, stupid, silly, grouchy "stiff"; but when he wants some one to go on the road he looks for a live manly man. When you get in stock it is _up to you;_ for eyes are on you, eyes just as anxious to see your good qualities as you are to show them, eyes that are trying to see you make good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I braced the old man--it wasn't exactly a freeze. But there was a lot of frost in the air."]

How can I get "in stock?" That's easy. If you are in the city you are on the spot; if you are in the country, "hyke" for the city! See that you haven't any cigarette stains on your fingers or tobacco in the corners of your mouth. Go into the wholesale houses, from door to door--until you find a job. If you are going to let a few or a hundred turn-downs dishearten you, you'd better stay at home; _for when you get on the road, turn-downs are what you must go up against every day._ If you know some traveling man, or merchant, or manager, or stock boy, maybe he can get you a "job in stock." But remember one thing: When you get there, you must depend upon Number One. Your recommendation is worth nothing to you from that hour on. This is the time when the good front gets in its work.

The city is a strong current, my boy, in which there are many whirlpools ready to suck you under; yet if you are a good swimmer you can splash along here faster than anywhere else. A successful traveling man once told me how he got on the road.

"I was raised in a little town in Tennessee," said he. "A traveling man whose home was in my native town took me along with him, one day, when he made a team trip to Bucksville, an inland country town, fourteen miles away. That was a great trip for me--fourteen miles, and staying over night in a hotel!--the first time I had ever done so in my life. And for the first time I knew how it felt to have a strange landlord call me "mister." It was on that trip that I caught the fever for travel, and that trip put me on the road!

"When, the next morning after reaching Bucksville, my drummer friend had finished business and packed his trunks, he said to me: 'Billie, I guess you may go and get the team ready.' I answered him, saying, 'The team _is_ ready and backed up, sir, for the trunks.' In three minutes the trunks were loaded in and we were off.

"'Billie,' said my friend--I shall never forget it for it was the dawn of hope for me, as I had never had any idea what I was going to do in after life!--'I'll tell you, Billie, you would make a good drummer, suh. When we drove down yesterday you counted how many more horseflies lit on the bay mare than on the white horse. You reasoned out that the flies lit on the bay because the fly and the mare were about the same color and that the fly was not so liable to be seen and killed as if it had lit on the white. That showed me you notice things and reason about them. To be a good traveling man you must make a business of noticing things and thinking about them. Real good hoss sense is a rare thing. Then, this mo'nin', when I said "Get the team ready," you said "It is ready, suh," and showed me that you look ahead, see what ought to be done and do it without being told. Generally any fool can do what he is told to; but it takes a man of sense to find things to do, and if he has the grit to do them he will get along. I'm just going to see if I can't get a place in our house for you, Billie.

You've got the stuff in you to make a successful drummer, suh. Yes, suh! Hoss sense and grit, suh--hoss sense and grit!'

"Sure enough the next Christmas night--I wasn't then sixteen--I struck out for the city in company with my older traveling man friend. He had got me a place in his house. The night I left, my mother said to me: 'Son, I've tried to raise you right. I'll soon find out if I have. I believe I have and that you will get along.' My father then gave me the only word of advice he ever gave me in his life: 'Son, be polite,'

said he; 'this will cost you nothing and be worth lots.'

"Well, sir, with those words ringing in my ears: 'Use hoss sense; have grit;' 'Be polite;' 'Son, I've tried to raise you right,' I struck out for the city. As I think it over now, the thing that did me the most good was my father's advice: 'Son, be polite, this will cost you nothing and be worth lots.' The boy can never hope to be much if he does not know that he should tip his hat to a lady, give his seat to a gray-haired man, or carry a bundle for an old woman.

"How strange it was for me that night, to sleep with my friend in a bed on wheels! How strange, the next morning, to wash in a bowl on wheels! and to look out of the Pullman windows as I wiped my face! I was _living_ then! And when I reached the city! Such a bustle I've never seen since. As I walked up a narrow street from the depot, I fell on the slippery sidewalk. 'Better get some ashes on your feet'

said my friend. And, indeed, I did need to keep ashes on my feet for a long time. I had before me a longer and more slippery sidewalk than I then dreamed of. Every boy has who goes to the city. But, when he gets his sled to the top, he's in for a long, smooth slide!

"I started in to work for twenty dollars a month--not five dollars a week! I found there was a whole lot of difference, especially when I had to pay $4.50 a week for board and forty cents for laundry. I was too proud to send home for money and too poor to spend it out of my own purse. Good training this! One winter's day a friend told me there was skating in the park. I asked a gentleman where the park was. 'Go three blocks and take the car going south,' said he. I went three blocks and when the car came along I _followed_ it, for I could not afford a single nickel for car fare. What a fortune I had when, during busy season, I could work nights and get fifty cents extra for supper money! None of this did I spend, as my boarding house wasn't far away.

The only money that I spent in a whole year was one dollar for a library ticket--the best dollar I ever spent in my life! Good books, and there are plenty of them free in all cities, are the best things in the world, anyway, to keep a boy out of devilment. The boy who will put into his head what he will get out of good books will win out over the one who gets his clothes full of chalk from billiard cues. One day the "Old Gentleman" saw me at the noon hour as I was going to the library with a book under my arm. 'So you read nights, do you, Billie,' said he. 'Well, you keep it up and you will get ahead of the boys who don't.'

"Work? I worked like a beaver. I was due at seven in the morning. I was always there several minutes before seven. One morning the old gentleman came in real early and found me at work, while a couple of the other boys were reading the papers and waiting for the seventh strike, and before most of the stock boys had shown up. At noon I would wrap bundles, take a blacking pot and mark cases, run the elevator or do anything to "keep moving." I did not know that an eye was on me all the time; but there was. At the end of a year the old gentleman called me into the office and said: 'Billie, you've done more this year than we have paid you for; here's a check for sixty dollars, five dollars a month back pay. Your salary will be $25.00 a month next year. You may also have a week's vacation.

"How big that sixty was! Rockefeller hasn't as much to-day as I had then. What he has doesn't make him happy; he wants more. I had enough.

Why, I was able to buy a new rig-out. I can see that plaid suit of clothes to this day! I could afford to go home looking slick, to visit my mother and father; I could buy a present for my sweetheart, too.

The good Lord somehow very wisely puts 'notions' into a young man's head about the time he begins to get on in the world, and the best thing on earth for him when he is away from home is to have some girl away back where he came from think a whole lot of him and send him a crocheted four-in-hand for a Christmas present. This makes him loathe foul lips and the painted cheek. When a boy 'grows wise' he stands, sure's you're born, on the brink of h.e.l.l. It's a pity that so many, instead of backing away when they get their eyelashes singed a little, jump right in.