VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
"I sold him two thousand dollars' worth of books that day you took me in to see him."
"He never said a word to me about it," I said,
"No; that kind doesn't talk about it."
"What kind doesn't talk?"
"The kind that never makes mistakes on account of its being bad business to make them.
That kind always knows what he wants and nobody can tell him different. That is the
kind that's educating my children and keeps my wife in good humor. You did me a good
turn, Mr. Livingston. I expected it when I gave up the two hundred dollars you were so
anxious to present to me."
"And if Mr. Harding hadn't given you an order?"
"Oh, but I knew he would. I had found out what kind of man he was. He was a cinch."
"Yes. But if he hadn't bought any books?" I persisted.
"I'd have come back to you and sold you something. Good day, Mr. Livingston. I am
going to see the mayor." And he got up as we pulled up at Park Place.
"I hope you sell him ten sets," I said. His Honor was a Tammany man.
"I'm a Republican, too," he said, and went out, not hastily, but leisurely, confident that
the train would wait. And it did.
I have told you this story in such detail because it concerned a remarkable man who
made me buy what I did not wish to buy. He was the first man who did that to me. There
never should have been a second, but there was. You can never bank on there being but
one remarkable salesman in the world or on complete immunization from the influence
of personality.
When Percy Thomas left my office, after I had pleasantly but definitely declined to enter
into a working alliance with him, I would have sworn that our business paths would
never cross. I was not sure I'd ever even see him again. But on the very next day he
wrote me a letter thanking me for my offers of help and inviting me to come and see
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