Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/64

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A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

the trade come to us, instead of chasing it up.

That was so like Jim that I just laughed at first; besides, that sort of advertising was a pretty new thing then, and I was one of the old-timers who didn't take any stock in it. But Jim just kept plugging away at me between trips, until finally I took him off the road and told him to go ahead and try it in a small way.

Jim pretty nearly scared me to death that first year. At last he had got into something that he took an interest in—spending money—and he just fairly wallowed in it. Used to lay awake nights, thinking up new ways of getting rid of the old man's profits. And he found them. Seemed as if I couldn't get away from Graham's Extract, and whenever I saw it I gagged, for I knew it was costing me money that wasn't coming back; but every time I started to draw in my horns Jim talked to me, and showed me

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