"Salesman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... business, misstatement is generally expected of a salesman. Advertisements of bargains, for example, have to be discounted by the wary shopper. "$10 value, reduced to $3.98," may mean something worth really $3. "Finest quality" may mean average quality; goods passed off as first-class may be shoddy or adulterated. Labels on foodstuffs and drugs are, happily, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to a bit of trouble to get a line on them without raising their suspicion. One of the boys lived in a neighborhood that was being canvassed for new customers and his wife had signed up. So I took her place when the salesman arrived with her first delivery—they deliver the first batch. I let him think I was Bob Coty and questioned him, but not enough to ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... until a time came that he could show his gratitude for the past. Meantime he had not been idle. His winning smile and clear eyes had been his passport; and after a few preliminary experiences he had secured a position as salesman in a large department store. His college diploma and a letter from the college president were his references. He was not earning much, but enough to pay his absolute expenses and a trifle over. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... home from tavern cup, Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appall; Arm'd with thy faithful staff, thou slight'st them all. But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass, The gentle salesman you with candor greet, And with reit'rated "good-mornings" meet. Announcing your approach by formal bell, Of nightly weather you the changes tell; Whether the Moon shines, or her head doth steep In rain-portending clouds. When mortals sleep In downy rest, you brave the snows and sleet Of winter; ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... hope. He possessed a first class college education, but that was all. He knew no trade nor was he equipped to enter any of the professions. It is true that there were positions around by the thousands which he could fill, but his color debarred him. He would have made an excellent drummer, salesman, clerk, cashier, government official (county, city, state, or national) telegraph operator, conductor, or any thing of such a nature. But the color of his skin shut the doors so tight that he ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the girl indifferently. The boy here promptly upset the counter; the rolled-up blanket which had deceitfully represented the desirable sheeting falling on the wagon floor. It apparently suggested a new idea to the former salesman. "I say! let's play 'damaged stock.' See, I'll tumble all the things down here right on top o' the others, and sell 'em for less ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... souls; from these her presence in intellectual clubs was a simple and natural transition. She met and talked with interesting people, and now and then she got introduced to literary people. Once, in a book- store, she stood next to a gentleman leaning over the same counter, whom a salesman addressed by the name of a popular author, and she remained staring at him breathless till he left the place. When she bragged of the prodigious experience at home, her husband defied her to say how it differed from meeting the lecturers who had been their guests in Tuskingum, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... crackerjack salesman!" agreed Tom, no less enthusiastically. "He's sold more bonds, in proportion, for his bank, than any other in this county. Dad and I both took some, and have promised him more. I am glad now that we let him go, although we valued his ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... make my headquarters there," said the salesman. "I seem to remember you. Sporting life is very attractive to me, I assure ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... thinking of the books. Swift as wood-creatures coursing on the track of prey, her mind was racing over the field of her life with Elihu and pinning down the mistakes he had made. She had never seemed to see them, but not one of them had escaped her. There was the day when a traveling salesman had sold him the onion seed that never came up, and the other one when he had bought Old White of the peddler, and seen him go lame after a two-mile drive, and when he dated a note on Sunday and the school-teacher had laughed. At first Amarita had not merely ignored ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... there for a half hour, and then strolled back to the mansion. On the lawn, at the side of the house, was the auction block—the carpenter's bench which had officiated at Ally's wedding. It was approached by a flight of steps, and at one end was the salesman's stand—a high stool, in front of which was a small portable desk supported on stakes driven into the ground. Near the block was a booth fitted up for the special accommodation of thirsty buyers. The proprietor was just opening his own and his establishment's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was a traveling salesman for a large furniture manufactory, and spent the greater part of his ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... "That's a salesman teaching," she whispered up to her tall protegee. "He's new to the job, I guess, and scared of us guyls; but I bet he bullies men when he gets the chance! He'll tuyn out ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... with anything that would facilitate such combinations, where several men with skill or money take their parts; as, for instance, where one is the buyer of raw materials, another keeps the accounts, another draws patterns, and another acts as salesman. On the other hand, some novel speculators go so much farther, that they would revolutionise society, and, by force, compel it to be organised into co-operative sections. It infers no sympathy with these wild schemes of destruction, and artificial reconstruction, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... Of the Salesman who sits next him, nothing need be said except that he is good-looking, rosy, well-dressed, and of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ever called Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a date with her. Not that Pearlie would ever have allowed them to. But she never had had to reprove them. During pauses in dictation she had a way of peering near-sightedly over her glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling salesman who was rolling off the items on his sale bill. That is a trick which would make the prettiest kind of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... bone-heads," said the other sourly. At first glance our friend thought he looked like an actor and his heart sank. But perhaps he might be a travelling salesman. He liked them. In either event, the stranger's estimate of the New York ball team pleased him. He rejoiced in every defeat it sustained, particularly at the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... activity is the so-called syndicating of the author's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work and inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was thus he had gained a portion at least of his favor with the country-folk, many of whom much preferred his ministrations to those of his partner. A glance, indeed, from the one to the other, was enough to reveal which must be the better salesman—and to some eyes which the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... before, and as she never had another. Urbana resented it that he who was so soon to occupy the exalted station of an officer of the regular army, and the princely salary of something over a thousand dollars a year "with all expenses paid,"—double the sum enjoyed by the head salesman of Miller & Crofts,—should be so utterly deluded as to the frivolous character of his betrothed, and means were taken to enlighten him. Anonymous letters came to Cadet Davies of the graduating class, which that grave and reverend senior committed, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... too! He says everybody calls him Lord Freddie. But come along, and I'll call him Lord—Frederick—Bingham,' with a voice of awe and appropriate pauses between the words. 'He always seems so trivial compared with his name; he reminds me of a salesman at a remnant counter, and I don't wonder everybody calls him Lord Freddie. I'm afraid I'm a disappointed woman, Lady Willow. I suppose the men have retrograded since armour went out of fashion; they had to be big and strong then to carry so much hardware. Of course it makes a difference ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... your factory going I wish you'd send a salesman to my head supply man," requested Mort Washer. "I'll buy them by the ton, and every guest who comes into one of my hotels will find a fresh comb in an aseptic wrapper by the ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Death' is not amusing," ventured Mrs. Leveret, whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an obliging salesman with a variety of other styles to submit if his ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... one day have I wept my woe; Nor wot I, when the morrow doth begin, If I shall have to write to Briggs & Co., To pray them to advance the requisite tin For ransom of their salesman, that he may Go forth as other boarders go alway— As those I hear now flocking from their tea, Led by the daughter of my landlady Piano-ward. This day, for all my moans, Dry bread and water have been served me. Behold the deeds that are done ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... him, but he was gone, and a very hard-looking, loud-voiced man came. I was dreadfully afraid he would have me; but he walked off. One or two more came who did not mean business. Then the hard-faced man came back again and offered twenty-three pounds. A very close bargain was being driven, for my salesman began to think he should not get all he asked, and must come down; but just then the gray-eyed man came back again. I could not help reaching out my head toward him. He stroked my face kindly. "Well, old chap," he said, "I think ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... you," put in her spouse, "as the salesman had shown us how to work it, an' it played the most life-like tunes, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to argue the point he'd come himself and take a car-load. He made a specialty of seeing that every one in town had enough food and enough religion, and he wasn't to be trifled with when he discovered a shortage of either. A mighty good salesman was lost ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... to add fresh value to his raw cotton by manufacturing it. Out of the value thus created by them, they were to recoup him for what he supplied them with: rent, shelter, gas, water, machinery, raw cotton—everything, and to pay him for his own services as superintendent, manager, and salesman. So far he asked nothing but just remuneration. But after this had been paid, a balance due solely to their own labor remained. 'Out of this,' said my father, 'you shall keep just enough to save you from starving, and of the rest you shall ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... a growing property, said that the vineyard at Marsac was worth more than eighty thousand francs, to say nothing of the traditional bits of land which old Sechard used to buy as they came into the market, for old Sechard had savings—he was lucky with his vintages, and a clever salesman. Perhaps David was the only man in Angouleme who knew nothing of his father's wealth. In David's eyes Marsac was a hovel bought in 1810 for fifteen or sixteen thousand francs, a place that he saw once a year at vintage time when his father walked ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Larry Woolford pushed it. There was no identification screen in the door, evidently the inhabitants had to open up to see who was calling, a tiring chore if you were on the far side of the house and the caller nothing more than a salesman. ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... adequately protect the foolish from the consequence of their folly would put an end to all commerce. The sin of "over-capitalization" differed in magnitude only, not in kind, from the daily practice of every salesman in every shop. Nevertheless, the popular fury that it aroused must be reckoned among the main causes contributory to the savage insurrections that accomplished the downfall ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... beggar from somewhere in Austria. He began by working on the machines in old Rosenthal's garment factory. He became a speeder, a foreman, a salesman; worked his way ahead steadily until the hour when he rented an old dwelling-house on Seventh Avenue and began to make misses' and juniors' coats. I believe he was the first manufacturer to specialize in those particular articles. Dozens ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and looked; but the salesman, with an unmoved countenance, went to the shelves and selected two volumes and laid them in silence on the counter. One was the "Life and Legends of Saint Patrick" with a picture in gilt of Brian Boru ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... hard on Sleeman. He was a good salesman, and he had a good proposition; but he was handicapped by conditions not of his creating and beyond his control. And he knew quite well that, while a corporation may not give an employee any credit whatever for satisfactory results, it invariably ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... too resentful to pay strict attention. I had set out in good faith, not for the first time in my career as a salesman, to answer an ad offering "$50 or more daily to top producers," naturally expecting the searching onceover of an alert salesmanager, back to the light, behind a shinytopped desk. When youve handled as many products as I had an ad like that has the right sound. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... well as printed his books. Ambrose was by no means daunted. As long as he might read as well as print, and while he had Sundays at Saint Paul's to look to, he asked no more—except indeed that his gentle blood stirred at the notion of acting salesman in the book-stall, and Master Hansen assured him with a smile that Will Wherry, the other boy, would do that better than either of them, and that he would be entirely ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The calling itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable that a man can sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a manikin. He inhabited a very narrow space behind a very short counter, but to ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the fish themselves?-I was to act as their salesman, and disclose all to them if they would give ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... high, and while it was active an Arab appeared on deck with a basket. He approached me and said he had five sacred kittens and some scarabs, and as he was not much of a salesman, a little short in his English and out of funds, he wanted me to auction them off to help him out. As I had done this kind of thing before, I accepted the delicate position and in a short time had planted his stock in new and responsible hands that would not be likely to throw it again ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... youth needed. After only a short period of irregular schooling, Ludwig, sixteen years old, had to enter his uncle's business; but a few years of apprenticeship convinced even the uncle that the young man was hardly on his right track as a salesman of groceries. A renewed effort to take up systematic school work with the view of preparing for one of the learned professions did not prove any more successful, and, in 1833, Ludwig, who had always shown an unusual talent ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the sofa. Jill sank down upon the pile of rugs and shook silently. Observing that we were unattended, another salesman was hurrying in our direction. Before he ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to say you're content to waste your life here? It's nothing less than suicide. When I think of the great hopes you had when we left college it seems terrible that you should be content to be no more than a salesman in ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... it was dark, and the three at home were grown anxious. Then when he felt sure that Grandpa was abed, back he would go, taking the roses to Cis. He would enter the flat "staggerin', like I can hardly stand up." And mourn over his ill-luck as a salesman. And if he had to take a whipping, "Well, I'll yell as hard's I can" (everybody's window was open these soft June nights) "even if I scare Grandpa a little, and I'll make Big Tom quit quick. And anyhow I'd feel awful for a long time if I done what he wants me to, but ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... very matter-of-fact account of himself. He then made an agreement for bed, use of fire, and kitchen, with his new friends at four shillings a week, and by the end of six months he was receiving a wage of fourteen shillings as salesman and had saved close ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before TWISDEN a fifty-pound banknote] It was brought in to change by a customer of mine three days ago, and he got value for it. Now, that's a stolen note, it seems, and you'd like to know what I did. Mind you, that customer of mine I've known 'im—well— eight or nine years; an Italian he is—wine salesman, and so far's I know, a respectable man-foreign-lookin', but nothin' more. Now, this was at 'alf-past two, and I was at my head branch at Putney, where I live. I want you to mark the time, so as you'll see I 'aven't wasted a minute. I took a cab and I drove straight to my customer's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... river Thames, and partly by land carriage from every distance within the limits of England, and part of Wales, is open every morning at day-light, and supplies the retailers for some miles round the Metropolis. The regular shop-keepers come here in carts, to purchase of what is called the Fish Salesman, who stands as it were between the Fisherman who brings his cargo to market and the Retailer; but there are innumerable hawkers of fish through the streets, who come and purchase for themselves at first hand, particularly of mackarel, herrings, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was soon looked upon by them as their "best" clerk. Selling by auction, especially in the evenings, was at that time a leading feature of the trade, and William Lee soon became an expert in that way, as well as in the general character of salesman to the country trade. There was scarcely a detail in the book trade with which he did not make himself personally familiar; he sought to post himself upon the character and contents of every book that was kept in stock, in order that he might be able to speak intelligently of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... nature would have guessed him to be a traveling salesman, finely equipped with nerve and with confidence in his own goods. The average servant would have been vastly impressed with his air of self assurance; and would have admitted him to the house, without question. (The long-memoried warden ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... $2000 from a native of that republic, who had applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley—a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams, then, a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him." Adams, in speaking of this episode, says that when he asked for transportation expenses to St. Louis, Edison pulled out of his pocket a ferry ticket to Hoboken, and said to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... jointly purchased by the Basins from a travelling salesman, as a highly illuminated volume, promising much of a lively nature, had turned out to be to an altogether ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... theater manager, had been manager of May Irwin, Peter Dailey, Lily Langtry, Amelia Bingham, and launched Robert Edeson as star. He became the manager of the Hudson Theater in 1903 and the Hackett Theater in 1906. Among his best known productions are "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Traveling Salesman" and "The Third Degree." He was president of the Henry B. Harris Company ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... running in Chicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized a furniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, who traveled for a jewelry house and sold musical instruments. The talk was all about good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musical prodigies. I learned that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear Booth ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... tradesmen who are most numerous, and who give colour to the whole body. There is Macwait, the cheap baker, he contributes his quota weekly to the betting-shop: he has a strong desire to touch a twenty-pound stake. Whetcoles, the potato salesman, has given up a lucrative addition to his regular business—the purveying of oysters—for the sake of having more time to attend the office. Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... more of the workman than we do. We should not be content to have the salesman stand between us—the salesman who knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. And watching the workman will teach that most important lesson—the nobility ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... drawers and down came boxes, and very soon the small counter was littered with piles of raiment variously gaudy which Spike viewed and disparaged with such knowing judgment that the salesman's respect proportionately grew, and Mr. Ravenslee, lounging in the background, was forgotten quite, the while ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... of organization, too, while admirably adapted to arousing enthusiasm and to securing new chapters quickly, did not make for stability and permanence. The Grange deputy, as the organizer was termed, did not do enough of what the salesman calls "follow-up work." He went into a town, persuaded an influential farmer to go about with him in a house-to-house canvass, talked to the other farmers of the vicinity, stirred them up to interest and excitement, organized a Grange, and then left the town. If ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... stupid. Her elders watched half in delight, half with pain, that they could not purchase everything at which she looked. Mrs. Zelotes bought some things surreptitiously, hiding the parcels under her shawl. Andrew, whispering to a salesman, asked the price of a great cooking-stove at which Ellen looked long. When he heard the amount he sighed. Fanny touched his arm comfortingly. "There would be no sense in your buying that, if you had all the money in creation," she said, in a hushed voice. "There's a twenty-five-cent ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... reposed in the end of the toilet soap case awaiting a purchaser, and had acquired a sweet odor of scented soap mingled with the plainer odor of cut castile, and no one had been so extravagant as to buy it. Once the druggist had tried to persuade the candy salesman to take it back in exchange for more salable goods, but after taking it from the show-case and smelling it the drummer refused. At the opposite end of the case the druggist kept his plush manicure and brush-and-comb sets, with a few lumps of camphor scattered among them to discourage moths, but ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... artificial raising of prices. It also acts as a feeder to the marches de quartier, to the great convenience of local consumers. Moreover the producer is safeguarded, for on his supplies a small fixed percentage only can be charged by the salesman, and the current market prices are made public by agents especially detailed ...
— A Terminal Market System - New York's Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, - and Comparisons of European Markets • Mrs. Elmer Black
... Strive and Succeed. Strong and Steady. Struggling Upward. Tin Box. Tom, the Bootblack. Tony, the Tramp. Try and Trust. Wait and Hope. Walter Sherwood's Probation. Young Acrobat. Young Adventurer. Young Outlaw. Young Salesman. ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... quarrel with her. If there is nothing in the cupboard, a pretty meal they make. No, you cry out against people in our world making money marriages. Why, kings and queens marry on the same understanding. My butcher has saved a stockingful of money, and marries his daughter to a young salesman; Mr. and Mrs. Salesman prosper in life, and get an alderman's daughter for their son. My attorney looks out amongst his clients for an eligible husband for Miss Deeds; sends his son to the bar, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a traveling salesman and built a tony brick house. They never had no children, but when he was killed into a railway accident she trimmed up that parrot's cage with crape—and now,"—Mrs. Tinneray with increasing solemnity chewed her calamus-root—"now she's been ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... judged to be the middle of the night. And the manner of his awakening was this. He seemed to be dreaming that he was buying a new pair of shoes and, after having tried on several tentative pairs in a shop, the salesman, who was attired in the full regalia of a cowboy, gave Dick's left foot a sharp kick as if to indicate that he should remove the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... said he was George Reilly and a salesman. The prisoner had given her name as Mary Donovan and said she was single. The Sergeant drew Mr. Reilly's attention to the street door, which was there for his accommodation, but he did not take the hint. He became so abusive that he, too, was locked ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... vastly more difficult and dangerous. We hear a great deal about special tests for the flier—vacuum-chambers, spinning-chairs, co-ordination tests—there need be none of these. The average man in the street, the clerk, the laborer, the mechanic, the salesman, with proper training and interest can be made good, if not highly proficient pilots. If there may be one deduction drawn from the experience of instructors in the Royal Air Force, it is that it is the training, not the individual, that ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... hardly French. The author wrote in the negro dialect, was telegraphic in form, suppressed verbs, affected a teasing phraseology, revelled in the impossible puns of a travelling salesman; then out of this jumble, laughable conceits and sly affectations emerged, and suddenly a cry of keen anguish rang out, like the snapping string of a violoncello. And with all this, in his hard rugged style, bristling with obsolescent words and unexpected neologisms, flashed perfect ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... been drinking alkali water all summer, and along about midnight they began to drop out until there was no one left to face the music except a little cattle salesman and myself. After all the others quit us, we went into a feed trough on a back street, and had a good supper. I had been drinking everything like a good fellow, and at several places there was no salt to put in the beer. The idea struck me that I would buy a sack of salt from this eating ranch ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... stomach trouble of many years' standing by reading Science and Health. My condition had reached the stage in which I had periodical attacks, that came on with greater frequency. I was a travelling salesman, and it was a common occurrence for me to have to call a physician to my hotel to administer morphine for an acute form of this disease. This became a regular thing at certain places, and these attacks always left me worse than before. As ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the next town, and my horse was tired, so I could go no further, and looked for work. A shopkeeper agreed to hire me as salesman. He made me sign a promise to remain six months, and he gave me a little empty room at the back of the store to sleep in. I had still three pounds of my own, and when you just come from the country three pounds seems a ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... that of a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent of sardonic bias. It wore all the grim appearance of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... dashing appearance, with a good vocabulary to act as travelling salesman, must be well recommended, and have a thorough knowledge of the dry goods business." That ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... tell you, Appleby; it ain't that you aren't a good salesman, but just now I'm—well, kind of reorganizing the business. I sort of feel the establishment ought to have a little more pep in it, and so— You see— But you leave your address and as soon as anything turns up I'll be mighty glad to let ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... right for a while," agreed Jack. "But it would grow tiresome after a few weeks, anyway. Lying here in the Basin, and talking like a salesman once in a while, isn't like a ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... I went, and earning just enough by peddling flat-irons to pay my way. It was spring when I started; the autumn tints were on the leaves when I brought up in New York at last, as nearly restored as youth and the long tramp had power to do. But the restless energy that had made of me a successful salesman was gone. I thought only, if I thought at all, of finding some quiet place where I could sit and see the world go by that concerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being sent into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went to a business college on Fourth Avenue and paid $20 ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the warm summer air. Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately recognised his wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, looking at them; I wondered what he would do. The salesman was holding up a bracelet before them, on its velvet cushion, and flashing it about in ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... 77 years old, employed as commercial salesman by one of the largest manufacturing companies of its kind in the world, and command a good salary and the confidence of my employers. Since my operation at Dr. Brinkley's hospital I am now their free lance salesman, opening up new territory and making good money. Any doubting ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... was sixty-five years of age, had carried on the jewelry business of her husband, Mortimer Darcy, after his death, which preceded her more tragic one by about seven years. Mortimer Darcy had been a diamond salesman for a large New York house in his younger days, and had come to be an expert in precious stones. Many good wishes, and not a little trade, had gone to him from his former employers, and some of their customers bought of ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... seven hundred dollars of my own money; the remainder was from the money sent home by the Mormon Battalion. I took the goods back and we opened a store at winter quarters. Brother Rockwood acted as chief clerk and salesman. We sold the goods at a great advance. What cost us seven cents in St. Joseph we sold at sixty- five cents. Everything was sold at a similar profit. I kept the stock up during the winter and did a good business. One drawback was ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... were the dreams of the beginning. From that he had passed to speculation, and three hundred gold "lions" out of Elizabeth's thousand had vanished one evening in the share market. Now he was glad his good looks secured him a trial in the position of salesman to the Suzannah Hat Syndicate, a Syndicate, dealing in ladies' caps, hair decorations, and hats—for though the city was completely covered in, ladies still wore extremely elaborate and beautiful hats at the theatres and places ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... tries to share in the life of a man, to play at his father's work, to be a miniature carpenter, salesman, or what not. He rides his father's cane and calls it a horse, in the same way that the little girl wraps a shawl about a towel, and showers upon it the tenderest tokens of maternal affection. All these examples go to show that every ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... one problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story presented some singularity; on the first floor four tall, narrow windows, close together, were filled as to the lower panes with boards, so as to produce the doubtful light by which a clever salesman can ascribe to his goods the color his customers inquire for. The young man seemed very scornful of this part of the house; his eyes had not yet rested on it. The windows of the second floor, where ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... whispers from friends as to the necessity of having a room that would do for a nursery. No glad young thing had leant on his arm while they chose the suite in white enamel, and china for "our bedroom," the modest salesman doing his best to spare their blushes. When Edith Gervase married she would get mamma to look out for two really good servants, "as we must begin quietly," and mamma would make sure that the drains and everything were right. Then her "girl ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... his reverie, and perceiving the brisk dealer about to tie up the three daubs. His first impulse was to walk away, but he felt ashamed to purchase nothing after standing so long before the shop, and causing the hungry-looking old salesman so large an expenditure of breath. "Wait a little," he said. "I will see if you have any thing to suit me." And, stooping down, he turned over a number of battered dusty old pictures heaped like lumber upon the ground. They were chiefly old-fashioned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... made them shine and when Henry Fenn saw them he looked at Mr. Brotherton, and Mr. Brotherton looked at Mr. Fenn, and the moon in Mr. Brotherton's face beamed a lively approval. Moreover the cigar salesman from Leavenworth and a hardware drummer from St. Louis and a dry-goods salesman from Chicago and a travelling auditor for the Midland saw Margaret's eyes and they too looked at one another and gave their unqualified approval. In other years—in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... at my irritation, my sense of restlessness. The little salesman was not responsible, though he had fretted me like a buzzing fly. It was rather that I had taken an intense dislike to the man calling himself Van Blarcom; that the girl, despite her haughtiness, had somehow given me an impression of uneasiness—of fear ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... that morning to the house of a young farmer who had been suggested by the genial gentleman as a good prospect. He turned over in his mind the best method of approach. It was a queer thing, he pondered, to visualize himself as a salesman. He wondered how many of the other fellows who had come back looked at it as he did. They had dreamed such dreams of valor, their eyes had seen visions. To Randy when he had enlisted had come a singing sense that the days ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... President you kin drop in along about supper time. Right now can't think of a thing you kin do for me. But I'll try ... I'll spend the afternoon thinkin' over all the things you might be able to do, and I'll try to pick one of 'em out.... I got to see a hardware salesman now. Afternoon ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... himself, and to do the feat; being at his wits'-end for money. He draws out his Full-Power, which, as first Spiritual Kurfurst, he has the privilege to do; nominates (1516) one Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him; and—here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man, it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... glad to say that I am now doing fairly well. I tried several positions and am now a traveling salesman for a large carpet house. I get fifteen dollars per week, all my expenses, and a commission on sales, so I consider ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... Engine slaps a cow in the back and the whole works deserts the track and the caboose I'm in slides over the bank, turns over on her side and dies, lower six at the bottom. I get handed the following—one suitcase, two pairs of shoes and a fat hardware salesman from upper five. Not forgetting my womanly rights I turn loose a rebel yell and start to climb out of the opposite window with the kind assistance of the arm of the berth, the face of the fat salesman and a broken window, appearing as the Pink ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... growing apparent. He ignored invitations from the Dream Shop, and never attended any of the popular public executions. When roving mobs were formed to have a little fun in the Mutant Quarter, Barrent usually pleaded a headache. He never joined the Landing Day Hunts, and he was rude to an accredited salesman from the Torture of the Month Club. Not even visits from Uncle Ingemar could make ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... there; but I could never have used all the blades, now that we no longer make quill pens. I looked fondly at the maker's name on the knife I did buy, and said that the table cutlery of a certain small household which set itself up forty years ago had borne the same: but the pleasant salesman did not seem to feel the pathos of the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... cause of the existence of this book may be found in a letter, written by my sister, and received by me, Harry Burton, salesman of white goods, bachelor, aged twenty-eight, just as I was trying to decide where I should spend a fortnight's vacation. She suggested, as I was always complaining of never having time to read, I should stay at her place, while ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Libraries, with their splendid collection of books; the archive room, with its long series of business accounts and ledgers; the private livingrooms of the Moretus family; and last, but not least, the modest little shop, where books still repose upon the shelves, which looks as though the salesman might return at any moment to his place behind the counter. England has certainly nothing like it, though London had till recently in Crosby Hall a great merchant's house of the fifteenth century, though stripped ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field, the next man will appear; not Jefferson, nor Franklin, but now a great salesman; then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage western general. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate is not theirs. When we are exalted ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... coincidence that should bring him into the one shop in all New York in which she happened to be sitting, she started up, thinking to surprise him. Then the surprise was hers, for she saw that he was in search of her. With a word to the obsequious salesman who met him, he came directly towards her hiding-place behind the dummy in sealskin. His face lighted with a merry smile that was good to see as he crossed over to her with ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at noon, and there received her first lesson in the truth that this world is a very small place, after all. A nattily dressed gentleman seated to one side of her place at table rose with the most polite bows and extended hand. Hazel recognized him at a glance as Mr. Howard Perkins, traveling salesman for Harrington & Bush. She had met him several times in the company offices. She was anything save joyful at the meeting, but after the first unwelcome surprise she reflected that it was scarcely strange that a link in her past life should turn up here, for she knew that in the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... another part of the store, and applied to a salesman whose appearance he liked better. After some hesitation, Ben made choice of a suit of substantial warm cloth, a dark mixed sack-coat, vest of the same material, and a pair of pants ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... whining expression, sighed as he paid. She was reserved with Mechenmal. At odd hours, Mieze Maier, a teen-ager, also came, and asked whether Herr Tontod had been there. Once Mieze Maier remained longer; from that time on she did it more frequently. Sometimes a fat, agreeable servant-girl of the salesman Konrad Krause was at the kiosk. She said to Mechenmal that he was good-looking, that he had passionately dark eyes and a kissable mouth, asked if he had time on Sundays to go dancing—she liked him very much. Mechenmal answered that he would not object to satisfying Miss ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... writer has been a traveling salesman, occupying positions of trust and responsibility. As is the universal trait among the larger element of my class, I contracted the indulgence of liquor. From its inception and social intercourse, it gradually developed until I became ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... foundation. Years ago he had made up his small young mind that he would never work in the factory and he settled the question by getting himself a job in one of the piano salesrooms on Wabash Avenue. He wasn't precisely a salesman yet, he might perhaps have been spoken of by an unkind person as an office boy. But it was essential that he look like a salesman and act like a salesman, even in the matter of going to lunch. Some day soon, he was going to succeed in completing ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... I tell you!" spoke Praestberg. "When I said I'd thought of doing you a return service, it wasn't just empty chatter. I meant it. And now it has already been done. The other day I ran across the travelling salesman who gave that lass ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... the big punch that could bite into an iron plate as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman. But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out of it. They ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Graham, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Commercial House, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted to the position of traveling salesman for the house, and has started out ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... might happen to know, if any such were stirring abroad: crude young men, mostly, with a great many "Sirs" and "Ma'ams" in their speech, and with that style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if the salesman were recommending himself to a customer,—"First-rate family article, Ma'am; warranted to wear a lifetime; just one yard and three quarters in this pattern, Ma'am; sha'n't I have the pleasure?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... consisted of two rooms in a little house in a quiet street. It was a street of simple two-story, one and two family dwellings, occupied by artisans and small tradespeople. There were many open spaces, gardens and vacant lots in the street. The house in which Siders lodged belonged to a travelling salesman by the name of Winter. The man was away from home a great deal, and his wife, with her child and an old servant, lived in the lower part of the house, while the rooms occupied by Siders were in the upper story. Siders lived very quietly, going ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... a relative who had died. He had made a study of his business, hence invested the entire sum in Irish products, and returning to America rented another store on Broadway, and thus began that great importing business. At this time he was his own buyer, salesman, book-keeper and errand boy. Ah! there is the secret of the success of nine-tenths of our great men. They began at the bottom—never hiring help for the mere appearance or convenience of their assistance. They never hired done ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... at $15 per month and buckled in. I might say that the rent didn't have to be paid in advance or we wouldn't have moved in. My soul mate—otherwise husband—worked as a truckman, a taxi driver, a cement lamp-post worker, a chauffeur, a night watchman, a salesman, a cook and a dish-washer. In five years we moved twenty different times, an average of once every three months (not because we wished to skip our rent, but because my husband found jobs in so many different parts of ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... pieces in quenching, don't rush to the superintendent with a "poor-steel" story, but find out first why it broke so that the salesman who sold it will not be able to harden piece after piece from the same bar satisfactorily. If you find a "cold short," commonly called "a pipe," you can lay the blame on the steelmaker. If it is a case of overheating and quenching when too hot, you will ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... doing a heavy business with imaginary patrons. Improvising counters with boards and boxes, and setting forth a very druggish-looking stock from the basket, each of the partners found occupation to his taste—Penrod as salesman and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... not useful, we may dispense with its purchase. Even at that, it may be necessary to demand that the article shall be not only useful but absolutely indispensable, for between the beguiling advertisement and the crafty salesman, almost anything that is manufactured may be proved necessary. At the best we shall probably purchase a-plenty, and the question of when a house reaches the point of overfurnishing is a difficult one to settle. Let one of us, for instance, venture at midnight into a dark ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... man's longish hair, worn pompadour, the slight thrust forward of the head, the arch of the nostrils,—gave him a sort of tense eagerness, a look of running against the wind. From the photograph Harvey might have been a gladiator; as a matter of fact he was a bond salesman. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... having been put in the Bastille, and upon the same diet as his salesman, stated the name of the Dutch printer who had published the pamphlet. They sought to extract more from him, and reduced his diet with such severity that he disclosed the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... some warlike instruments which Sato, with the instincts of a true salesman, was now displaying, and had picked up a bow. It was short, very strong, and made of pine wood. He held it horizontally and twanged the string. I looked up in time to catch a pleased expression on the face ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... much coarser," was the reply, as the salesman handed down several pieces of inferior quality. After a great deal of thinking and calculating, Agnes ordered a dress of the fine material and one of the coarser. "Will you oblige me by laying the fine dress pattern aside for a few days until I send for it?" she asked. "I will pay for both ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... of temperament is everywhere displayed. Bridget's daughter has left the kitchen and is a school teacher, a stenographer, a saleswoman, a milliner, or a dressmaker; her son is a clerk, a bookkeeper, a traveling salesman, or a foreman. Wherever the human touch is the essential of success, there you find the Irish. That is why in some cities one-half the teachers are Irish; why salesmanship lures them; why they are the most successful walking delegates, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... "there was the itinerant salesman whose s'fel threw a shoe. He knocked on the door of the hut of the nearest peasant and said...." What was said by the ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... came into "Delphine's" on a windy summer afternoon when Emeline had been there for nearly five years. He was a salesman for some lines of tailored hats, a San Franciscan, but employed by a New York wholesale house. Emeline chanced to be alone in the place, for Miss Clarke was sick in bed, and the other saleswoman away on her vacation. The trimmers, glancing out through a plush curtain at the rear, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... The Salesman said that he could tell at a glanse that I was not that sort, being calm in danger and not likly to chase a chicken into a fense corner and murder it, as some do ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... customers in person. Practiced in all that portion of human knowledge which appertains to a salesman, he let the sweet girls select two or three dozen handkerchiefs of great beauty, but totally without ornament, and even pay for them, before he said a word on the subject of the claims of his reserved corps. When he thought the proper moment had arrived, however, one of the least decorated ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... feared him, as he grew older disputed his authority and, according to the father, always disobeyed him. He was always shy with women and, as we shall see, his first conflict in the sexual sphere was solved by a psychotic reaction. Once an efficient salesman, for the past nine years he has drifted from one position to another. As he says himself, he lost ambition after he decided not to get married, and concluded he would not attempt to gain worldly possessions, but merely enough to subsist on. His early ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... still more intently. I was conscious of the salesman's regard also. My tone, I am sure, was anything but gracious, and I imagine I appeared as disgusted and embarrassed as I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... your good kisses, for Francia especially, which Buloz only put in with a sour face and for lack of something better: you see that I am not spoiled, but I never get angry at all that and I don't talk about it. That is how it is, and it is very simple. As soon as literature is a merchandise, the salesman who exploits it, appreciates only the client who buys it, and if the client depreciates the object, the salesman declares to the author that his merchandise is not pleasing. The republic of letters is only a market in which one sells ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert |
