1
I HAD NO SOONER reached the steep black streets of Boston, than the easy bread and butter of charity which I had eaten for a year seemed far behind. I was in the land of opportunity once more, and very glad to be there. But again I must attack the problem of American efficiency, American business methods. In Boston I met Hsun, by means of a memorandum from George telling me our friend would be found here. Hsun had come up on an excursion ticket to interview some Boston Orientals about a business loan to start a restaurant. He was having great trouble about the funds for this restaurant. Nobody believed that Hsun would succeed. He told me that he was still trying to get money out of Hung-Kwan Pang for the tea business the latter had taken over. Pang owed him forty dollars, but Hsun would squeeze none of this out of him. Instead, Pang told him he would make a discount, and give Hsun in payment a quantity of valuable fountain pens. To hear Pang talk, you would think he was giving Hsun a great business opportunity. Pang said he had sold these pens all over the country, and had netted $3000 with no trouble at all. After that he had bought out all the pens that this Japanese store had, but was willing to hand over his stock to Hsun on account of the friendship he felt for him. With money from the sale of pens, he gave Hsun to understand, he, Pang, had bought stocks and step by step climbed up the ladder to be a rich man. Hsun had had no luck so far in selling pens, but Pang insisted it was because he had no guts, no business method.
Hsun had brought these pens with him to Boston—a whole suitcase of them—hoping to give these as security for a loan, but nobody except Pang believed these pens were any good. We got them out and examined them. There were hundreds and thousands of them, pens with glass points. Pang had reported their wholesale price was thirty-five cents each, and that they easily sold for one dollar. Both Hsun and I were sceptical. Hsun suggested lowering the retail price, and seeing if we could sell them at once, here in Boston, before we went down to New York.
Well, the upshot was, we started out at once, with the suitcase. We sold a few the first morning, but it did not more than pay for our lunch. In the afternoon, because the suitcase was heavy, Hsun invested fifty cents with a Jewish drugstore man for permission to hold a demonstration in his window. We were given room there for the display purpose, and we stuck the pens up, using a soft sheet of cork provided by the pen company. Since Hsun could not write very well, he had me write in my best style, “Guaranteed. Come in and buy.” This seemed to us like business efficiency. We drew a crowd, but they only laughed, and we hardly sold enough to pay for the space in the window. By evening we were both tired and discouraged, and Hsun was again cursing Pang.
Next morning, we tried again, each going in a different direction. I took part of the pens in a Corona typewriter case, lent me by a Chinese restaurant man. I had the idea of trying business offices. But many of these buildings had “No Canvassing” signs. Then an office caught my eye with familiar letters written upon the window. “The Universal Education Publishing Company.” Perhaps I might find D. J. Lively there. Maybe he would not kick me out, even if I were trying to sell him worthless pens. But I was unprepared for the hearty welcome which awaited me. At the end of the office, behind a fence and surrounded by typewriters and stenographers, the good-looking shiny gentleman I had already encountered once in Stratford was leaning back in his swivel chair and he caught my eye almost instantly, leaning forward with a beaming smile. I stepped up, still with misgivings.
“May I talk to you a moment, sir? That is, if you are not too busy.”
“Why of course! I am never too busy to talk. You know, my boy, people who run up and down with papers in their hands all the time—these people who seem very busy and never talk to others and never try to help others—these are the kind that never get much done. No, my lad, D. J. is never too busy to talk,” (here he gave me a sly wink), “but he makes investment and profit out of his talks. Sit down, sit down.”
Having shaken hands with him and seated myself in a straight chair by his side, I hardly knew how to begin.
“Well, my boy, I see you lost no time in looking me up. And you are interested in selling, that is it?”
I almost jumped. He seemed to have read my mind.
“Well—I want to make some money for the coming college year. I must have it if I am to stay in Boston,” I began, hesitating.
“Out with it! Straight from the shoulder! Don’t beat around the bush. You knew that D. J. Lively is your man. College—yes, very fine, very fine. Do you see that man over there in the far corner of the room?” he lowered his voice. “I pay that man a college president’s salary every year. Yes sir! I never had a college education myself, but then I know by heart our great educational work—Universal Education, in three volumes. And I have been of untold service to countless boys going to college.”
I was still too bashful to mention the pens. And anyhow, Mr. Lively kept right on.
“How I do like to see manly independence! The spirit that inspired Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. The spirit back of these United States of America. Nothing is too small by which to make honest money. George Washington, the father of his country, was only a poor bookseller once. Did you know that, my boy? Yes, a poor bookseller.” He made an impressive pause. “And the man you see before you, too. D. J. Lively. That’s how he got his start. The selling business. Have you ever tried it before?”
“Not in Boston, sir.—Er—I have these pens,” I brought them out, mumbling.
“What? So you are a salesman!” Mr. Lively leaned back in his swivel chair and laughed heartily.
“But I’m afraid they’re not much good. . . .”
“Here, here! That’s not the way to sell anything, boy,” sputtered Mr. Lively. “You’re going against the first law of salesmanship!” His round eyes protruded. He looked shocked. “Dear, dear. But give me those pens. I think I can use a couple.” And he winked, with twinkling eyes.
I handed the Corona case over to him. He selected six. I was overwhelmed.
“Why—why do you want so many,” I stammered, “when you already have a good one?” For I saw it on his desk.
“You see, I have plans for you, my boy. I want to give you confidence in your first venture. But that isn’t the point. Let this be a lesson to you. You have sold yourself to me already. I stand before you favorably impressed. So your pens have sold themselves. But see here, my boy, between you and me, you should be selling something better than this.” He examined the pens with a thoughtful frown, much to my humiliation. “Don’t you think so?”
I said that it was very hard for an Oriental to learn American salesmanship.
“Come, come, my boy, that isn’t the spirit of American optimism. Your background may be a good thing. Only you must reap advantage out of that. You must select some field where that will help. New England, now. An Oriental salesman for books. H’m!” Mr. Lively paused, and looked at me inquiringly. “A fine clean Christian young Oriental earning his way through college.” Lowering his voice he asked my views on life under two headings, whether I ever smoked or drank. I replied, “No.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Lively with relief. “Now, my boy, everything’s all right. I wouldn’t smoke. I have never smoked because I think smoking is morally wrong. As for drink, I wouldn’t associate with anybody who touches it.”
I was thinking that Mr. Lively looked just the kind of man who would enjoy a good cigar. His was also the energetic temperament, I was almost sure, that would like to swear sometimes, but observing his big, morally shiny face, I was sure he was speaking the truth and that he never did.
“Good. And you are very much in earnest, eh . . . about this education?”
“Yes sir. I came to the West especially to study Shakespeare. I have already read all his plays that have been translated into the Japanese.”
“Shakespeare? Good, good.” Here Mr. Lively clapped me on the shoulder and remarked to the air with boundless magnanimity. “H’m, this fine boy seems the genuine article. Why, nobody could doubt it. Everybody in New England will want to help you. D. J. Lively is a man hard to fool. Certainly I could never doubt a fine, earnest Christian lad.” Then he said to me with beaming eye, “How would you like to sell our Universal Education, my boy, and earn the money to put yourself through college?”
“Great!” I exclaimed. (I wished George could have been there to see him! . . . It was just what I had always thought . . . so the American man did business . . . such a generous man, his charity shining out to every corner of the earth—even to the interior of Asia—you could see it in the good-looking Y.M.C.A. building in Seoul, or in the Educational Institutions in Peking. So many schools and hospitals—all, I thought, coming from the charitable feelings of a man like this.)
“But look here, Han, you must learn something of salesmanship. Your approach in selling me these pens was very very poor. My boy, you evidently have no notion of the veriest fundamentals. I was startled, I was almost discouraged when I heard what you said about those pens being no good. I was your prospective customer, you know. But you’ll learn. I can see that. Cultivate your faith in yourself. And in the goods you are selling. Did you ever stop to think what a noble calling for any man—that of selling books? selling Universal Education to all men?”
“Almost like a missionary,” I was thinking. While Mr. Lively went on in inspired tones, like a man cupping his ear to the Muse.
“Yes, just north of Boston. We will let you monopolize that field, I think. Never forget the fine earnestness of one who is seeking help to educate himself. Never swerve from the straight, the narrow path. . . . And in salesmanship, just as in Life, you must have Faith. Faith in all the finer, nobler things—in yourself, in the goods you are selling. . . .”
We parted with the understanding that I should come in tomorrow and learn about this business opportunity.
2
When I reported my interview with Mr. Lively to Hsun in glowing terms, he agreed that it was for me a business opportunity, and he advised me to stay in Boston for a while until it materialized, rather than come to New York where he himself found it so hard to make a living. He saw now that the pens were no good. And Hsun was right. Anybody who was such a fool as to buy our pens would tell others not to buy, and if he saw us again would try to get his money back. In a sense, it was like begging, taking money away from people for nothing, and not from rich people but from poor—for people who had money would never buy such pens. The poor who could not afford a decent pen were the only possible customers. So it was not even Robin Hood heroism. We were both disgusted with the pen business. And that very night Hsun took the boat for New York.
But my future did not look so rosy to me, either, after calling on Mr. Lively the following morning. For first I found that I was required to buy a Prospectus—a fat, handsome volume, bound in leather, and containing the most telling extracts from those three superlative volumes, Universal Education. But this prospectus cost ten dollars—as much as a copy of the work itself. In other words, each of Mr. Lively’s salesmen automatically became a customer to him before earning any money at all. I would have been discouraged, if Mr. Lively had not taken me around with his hand on my shoulder and introduced me to all the office force as his future salesman. They greeted me with “Very glad to meet you,” which was a lot. Thus I was persuaded. I invested my ten dollars. And Mr. Lively gave me a businesslike receipt and the prospectus, together with a number of papers, sales talks of various kinds to be memorized. Some were as long as twelve pages, others only eight or six, and a few, as short as three. But there was still a contract to be signed with the company. Mr. Lively refused to sign this contract with me yet.
“We must do nothing hastily,” said Mr. Lively, and he broke it to me that I would need to take a long course of training in his school for salesmanship. Then I was indeed discouraged and explained that I had no means of getting along while learning to be a star salesman.
“Oh, I’ll fix that,” said Mr. Lively, who radiated optimism. “You are my boy from now on. Why, I’m going to take you out and show you what a real American home looks like from the inside. You can live in my home with my own children scot-free while you are memorizing these talks. I’ll give you some private lessons, too. After that, you can attend some of the meetings in my office and brush up a little on the finer points of salesmanship, and then I think you’ll make good.”
Then he told me to be at his office at five o’clock and he would take me out to his home in the suburbs. “Be prompt, my dear boy. This is the first lesson for the future business man.”
At five o’clock, I found Mr. D. J. singularly fresh and unexhausted, as full of good will as ever, after pumping it out all day.
“Sit down, my boy. Be with you in a minute.” He took down the receiver of his desk telephone. “Mildred, Mildred, is that you, Mildred? This is Daddy talking. What can I get?” Then I heard a shrill woman’s voice at the other end of the wire sounding mad and nervous. “I don’t care! You get anything you want to.” And Bang! She hung up while Mr. Lively was still talking.
D. J. turned around to me. Gently he beamed, like a bald mountain with sunshine. He winked, conveying to me an air of conspiracy.
“I’ll fix it. I know how to handle Mrs. D. J.”
We stepped into Mr. Lively’s big Cadillac car, as expansive, good-looking and morally shiny as its owner. “We’ll take Mother out a real good steak,” he chuckled, winking again, as he drove around to a large clean shiny meat shop in the city, and purchased an exceptionally big, tender, thick cut of beefsteak. “With her that ought to close the deal. We’ll put this one over.”
And not losing his good humor for a moment, he went on talking about Mrs. Lively, telling me what a good cook she was, how she was a college graduate, and a distant relative of a New England poet, as we drove out of Boston.
“A superior wife and mother,” Mr. Lively summed up in the same tones of hearty eulogy which he used toward Universal Education. “A noble example of womankind. Tender heart—boundless energy. High-strung . . . but a real helpmate. Makes fine lemon pies. Yes, sir, I knew the stuff of Mrs. Lively as soon as I saw it. None of your bob-haired type for me. So the sale was cinched, you might say—well,” Mr. Lively looked at me with solemn gravity. “I stepped another rung up the great American ladder of Success when I married Mrs. Lively.” Then he went on in his hearty optimistic way, “My boy, Mrs. Lively is going to be a mother to you. You’ll be Mrs. Lively’s boy as well as mine.”
He talked more about boys he and Mrs. Lively had raised, on the selling of Universal Education, until today they were big successes, making large incomes. One or two schoolteachers he had saved from their fates . . . now they had large cars, like this one—he pointed to the long shiny hood of the one we were riding in—and much bank stock.
“You and I are going to get on well,” reiterated Mr. Lively confidently. “I know the value of Shakespeare, though I am a practical man and not a college graduate. Between you and me, the best business men are not college graduates. But I always say, give me Shakespeare and the Bible . . . and the three volumes of Universal Education. ‘Speak the speech, I pray thee’ . . . you know that quotation? . . . Oh, you must work hard to memorize these sales talks, my boy. . . . You will have plenty of time to study them out here with Mrs. Lively, even though you help Mother a little about the house . . . um . . . I don’t suppose you drive a car, my boy?” Mr. Lively glanced at me appraisingly, almost as if he were measuring me for a suit.
“Well, I have not had much experience,” I murmured modestly. But evidently not modestly enough, for he seemed to be hopeful. He said it would be a fine thing if I could take him in and out of the city after a hard day’s work sometime. And he let me take the wheel in hand. It was the first time I had ever handled the steering wheel of an automobile. My experience, I had meant, was with bicycles.
“For mercy’s sake, boy, that’s not the way to drive.” His big florid face became quite faded as he snatched the wheel just in time to save us from the ditch. The car tottered a moment on two wheels.
“Whew! Whew!” sputtered Mr. Lively, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “I see you’re the go-ahead, no-stopping kind. But this lesson of yours—my boy—this lesson of yours—it almost cost me $7000.”
He repeated the price several times, as he got out and rubbed the fenders with a dust cloth on the ditch side.
“My boy,” he resumed, when we were driving safely once more, “I know you’ve got the stuff from which good salesmen are made. I can’t be fooled on your personality. But I don’t believe you’ll ever be able to drive a car—if you take my advice, you’ll keep away from machinery!—a car—don’t forget—worth $7000!”
We came into a small suburban town also of a morally shiny character, with trees, big shiny houses, and beautifully shiny lawns, hedges, and flower beds. Mr. Lively stopped before a handsome, tall three-story house built neatly of yellow bricks. Its back was on a large park.
“Do you see that park?” said Mr. Lively, pointing it out. “It’s my back yard—and I don’t pay a cent for it!” He chuckled, and this joke seemed to please him very much.
Mrs. D. J. opened the door herself with a bounce, before Mr. D. J. could bring out his key. She snatched the meat from Mr. Lively’s hand.
“Mother, this is one of my boys!”
Mrs. Lively answered with a loud sniff. She was a little, shrivelled, domestic-looking woman with an aggrieved expression, all wrapped about in a huge bungalow apron.
“You know I’ve got no time for talking now,” she screamed, as she ran away.
“Mrs. Lively, you see, does all her own work,” said Mr. Lively, not at all taken aback. “This house believes that the way to be happy is to work. Mrs. Lively is my treasure. I would not be where I am today without the help of Mrs. Lively. A girl of true blue.”
This seemed to be said for the benefit of the speeding Mrs. Lively. But she took no notice.
Now two children came running to meet their father. Mr. Lively introduced them as Martin and Elsie, aged six and ten respectively. They were really lovely-looking children. Elsie seemed shy and sensitive. She followed her mother into the kitchen and I could hear her semi-whispering voice plead as the swinging door swung violently. “But Mother, Daddy says he’s come to help you. Let’s be nice to him.”
As for Martin, he entertained me while his father was off washing his hands, by telling me how much money he and his sister would have from insurance when Mr. D. J. died. Of course, in the Orient this would have been shocking manners, but it just showed Martin’s practical upbringing. I’m sure he was very fond of both parents.
“Come to dinner,” screamed Mrs. Lively, popping in at the living-room door again.
“Yes, my dear. The queen of cooks, the cream of wives!” said the cheerful Mr. Lively, who had returned and was patting Martin approvingly on the head for remembering the rate of interest on some parental bonds. But Mrs. Lively was gone again. She seemed to be always running up and down, in and out. She slammed the dishes down upon the table and ran out very quickly to the kitchen, where we could hear her opening and shutting the oven with a bang.
“Is it a lemon pie night?” asked D. J., keeping up his loud and conciliatory tone. “Surely I smell lemon pie.”
“Yes!” shouted Martin and Elsie together. “Lemon pie night. You’re right!”
“I was telling Chungpa” (Mr. Lively had already inquired my given name on the way out) “about Mother’s famous lemon pies. And I was reminiscing. O well I recollect the time she came to me to get a job. A job—would you believe it?” Mr. Lively snickered, “Selling—ha ha!—books. That was before your time, Martin and Elsie. I looked her over and I said, ‘No, my dear, I can never give you that sort of job. It’s not your line. But I can—and I assure you I will—give you—Myself!’” He beamed fondly on his rather too jumpy and frowny partner of bed and board. “I am a great judge of character, as you have already sensed, Chungpa. I recognized the artist of the lemon pie. Wasn’t that the way of it, Mother? Didn’t you marry me because I wouldn’t give you any other job but my self?”
“How can you be so ridiculous, D. J.!” frowned and pouted Mrs. Lively. But he affably squeezed her and gave her a loud, benevolent kiss on the forehead, until Mrs. Lively began to melt with unwilling smiles. Now indeed she was nicer to me, and heaped my plate many times full. That steak was wonderful.
3
Of course, the whole Lively family was very human and very nice to me, except that I could not memorize the sales talk very quickly while being a help to Mrs. D. J. There had been no definite understanding about this. Being a help evidently meant washing all the dishes and cleaning the fourteen-room house, and wringing out the clothes for Mrs. Lively, and if she went out under the porte-cochere and began washing the windows of the $7000 car—as I noticed she did once or twice when I was getting ready to study and looking out of the living-room window—naturally I must go down and help her there, too. But she didn’t treat me like a servant, there was no yes-madame about it, and Mrs. D. J. was very nice at times.
She had the same repertoire as Mr. Lively about the poor boys or poor girls whom they had helped to get through some tough spot . . . and she, too, preferred some successful young salesman who now owned a beautiful home, who was prominent in clubs and who possessed a handsome car.
Mrs. Lively was rather an indulgent mother. But she was always working very hard when at home. She did everything herself in running that big house, except that once a week a washwoman came to do the big things. But next day Mrs. Lively ironed everything herself. It was my job to bring things in from the line in the back yard, and to wring out the things she did not give to the laundress. Of course, she cooked all her own meals, ordering from stores by telephone, except the meat or something special which Mr. Lively loved to get on the way home. She cooked many pies, biscuits, and muffins. When she burned them, she would cry. I never saw anybody crying so much over unimportant things! When Mr. Lively came home, he usually found her angry, or in tears. She was as perpetually flustered and aggrieved as he was beaming and assured. Then he would get her out of this by kissing. Gradually she would recover . . . speak a little, cry a little, finish the sentence. A good cryer. A good laugher. And Mr. Lively said she was a good woman and a good wife—and very tenderhearted. Mr. Lively always said to me that I was lucky to come into a beautiful American home and see the inside and know how things were running inside.
“It’s a great pity that many Oriental students never have a chance to see American home life before they return. The Americans are models of family life, and you have a lot to learn.”
They all went to bed rather early, and I was left alone with good lights and a good chair for reading, and a fairly large number of books which at least made a beautiful decoration for the living room. I examined all these books while I was there, and I think Mrs. Lively thought I should help more, because I burned so much electric light. They had Dickens, Scott, Kipling, Stevenson, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Longfellow—mostly with pages uncut. Elsie was the only reader among them, and she hadn’t got around to all the books yet. As for contemporary writers, the Livelys did not have any except Henry van Dyke, Robert Service, and Edgar Guest. Edgar Guest’s Poems was their most recent book. It was autographed. Mr. Guest had lectured in one of the Y.M.C.A.’s where Mr. Lively also spoke. When Mr. Lively told me about it, he said, “Mr. Guest is a grand fellow—because he makes a lot of money with his writing and he is a good moral man; he is well known.” I think Mr. Lively wanted an endorsed statement from him on the Universal Education work to be used in selling.
4
The classes in advanced salesmanship for which I had been waiting were beginning. I had to go into the city for them, since they took place in Mr. Lively’s private office. Here were comfortable chairs all right, and a big desk for Mr. Lively, with a blackboard to one side of the desk. We did not pray, though I somewhat missed that. Mr. Lively opened the meeting by asking in Sunday-school voice: “Our company—what does it stand for? What has been its motto for twenty-five years? What is it known for?”
Silence from all the students, whom Mr. Lively held with his hypnotic eye. A lady who sat in the back spoke up in ringing tones: “I think it’s—Service, Mr. Lively.”
“Yes, Service,” beamed Mr. Lively. “Our company lives to give service. Doing good is the secret of how it makes money. We are famed for service to customer, to salesman, to home, church, country throughout this great magnificent United States of America. The point I will make then is—Service, beginning with a capital S. We’ll just put that down to remember.” And he drew a large expansive capital S on the board, running from top to bottom, and at the very top finished out the word in small letters.
“Now I think of something else this company has plenty of—something beginning with S. Can anybody suggest it? Well, I will tell you,” pursued Mr. Lively. “It is—STUFF!” and he clapped one hand on the palm of the other to emphasize. “And with Service and the right Stuff—what else? Come, what is needed to make sales?”
The same lady from the back of the room said, “Sticking, I think, Mr. Lively.”
“Right! The difference between a good salesman and a poor salesman is sticking to it. Now—we add up Service, Stuff, Sticking—what does that come to?”
“Sales!” sings out the voice from the back of the room.
“Sales, of course! And it’s sales that make the successful man or woman in business.
Success
Sales
Sticking
Stuff
Service
(And we mount the ladder.) But it takes all four S’s to make the big S in Success! Now—if we draw a line like this through all the S’s” (our teacher playfully suited the action to the word), “what do we get, folks? Why, yes! The American dollar!”
Everybody laughed. I thought Mr. Lively would surely approve of the Chinese character for Buddha, which is man with a dollar sign after it (so: 佛).
“The successful salesman is a success. Remembering my little table. An invaluable aid. Apply it. In matrimony, for example. When you want to clinch the deal!” Mr. Lively winked, and continued to beam inspiringly into our eyes. “Cultivate the personality of the successful salesman. Active, positive, alert, aggressive.” And certainly he seemed the epitome of every word. I listened receptively. Was I not being admitted into the Holy of Holies of the American civilization? This was just the very baptism I needed.
“Now I’ll turn you over to our teacher, Miss Fulton, who has come all the way from Cincinnati to teach you.” (She with the voice in the back came forward modestly rubbing her hands and smiling.) “Miss Fulton started as a saleswoman. Soon she was selling fifteen copies of our work a day. She went up, up, up. There was no stopping the lady. Today she has a beautiful home in Cincinnati and a country-house in Michigan. She has her own car, her chauffeur, and stocks and bonds in the bank as security.”
Miss Fulton was about forty-five and quite stylishly dressed. She had black hair, curled and marcelled, with white and red colors on her face that moved rather stiffly when she smiled. Gold teeth gleamed in her successful smile.
“I’m sure it’s very nice of Mr. Lively to say all this about me. But—why—the only way to make good is to go ahead. I know I am addressing a picked class. That is a help. All before me have the fortunate gift of a positive personality. A lot of people do not have this. But because you have—each and every one of you—Mr. Lively has picked you out to be his salesmen. I would say, from my experience, Mr. Lively is a very careful man when he picks. Isn’t that so, Mr. Lively?”
I looked around at the class that Mr. Lively had picked. There were several ex-ministers, a widowed mother who had brought her little girl of seven to attend the class with her, a group of college boys on vacation, etc.
“To begin with, salesmanship is an art. It is not easy. Few things in this life sell themselves. Or look at it this way. If you are able to sell the customer something he wants, we can hardly call that salesmanship, can we? The good salesman makes the customer want the unwanted article.”
To me this was novel to hear, and the opposite of Confucius’s saying, “Serve as you wish to be served.” How would you like to be forced to buy something you did not want? But Miss Fulton was hurrying on to the next point.
“When you begin to understand this other side—the creative side—of salesmanship, it may mean your entrance into a new life. It may revolutionize your personality. But first a few rules of common sense. Get up early. Start the day right. Have a good breakfast (not just grapefruit and coffee). Never try to sell on an empty stomach. (The anemic person, the person with no vitality does not make a good salesman.) Never try to sell on a full stomach—you may not take full advantage of a situation. Remember, you are training as for an athletic event. Salesmanship is a contest. You must be vital, dynamic, for constantly you will have to overcome sales resistance. No customer willingly buys. He struggles against buying though it may be for his own good. . . . Be vital, dynamic,” Miss Fulton consulted her notes again. “Well, just be sensible. Be good to yourself. You are your own asset or liability. Go to bed early. Lie down a few minutes after each meal for a rest or a snooze. You will be surprised at the surplus vitality you can accumulate this way.” Now I understood why Mr. Lively lay down always after eating. He was recharging his vitality for some more profits and good investments.
“Then, as a salesman, you must take special pains with your appearance. (But let me remind you, have nothing conspicuous in your dress. You want all your customer’s attention centered on what you have to say, not on your red necktie.) See that your teeth are well cleaned, mouth well washed, fingernails immaculate, hair neat. Make yourself an attractive human being. But when you are selling, you must dress rather humbly—plainly, avoiding all that is gay or expensive-looking.”
Miss Fulton paused just a moment for breath, then continued. “And now a few words about technique.” She held up the sales-talk manual, which I had been memorizing now for several weeks. “This is your sales-Bible. You must not question it, or try any innovations until you have first tried out all that is contained here. This manual holds the cream of what all great salesmen and saleswomen have found most practical. We know these talks to be successful, they come from men and women who are Successes. . . . ‘And by their fruits shall ye know them. . . . ’ Do not talk about anything that has nothing to do with business. Let every word you use be planned to put the deal over. Never forget why you are there, and that you are fighting for time, time to convince the customer. Now you know it takes twelve minutes to give the main sales talk. If you think you have succeeded after the first five minutes, get out that sales form. For heaven’s sake don’t waste time then!” Miss Fulton spoke in such tones of admonitory horror, that there was a general laugh, and a bright smile from Miss Fulton herself. “But if you feel you have not sold your article, keep the sales form in the background. Don’t hesitate. Go on to the second talk, to the third. You are not likely to run out of material, for you have an hour’s talk prepared for you in this manual. After that, you can scrap the manual and try your own resources. Anyhow, keep at it, until you are forced to leave or have convinced the customer. Perhaps you may see her looking confused. (I say she, for most of your customers will be women.) Confusion is the first sign of weakening. You must seize on it. Take out your sales form now and say softly, ‘Just sign here, under your neighbor, Mrs. Smith. . . . ’ Or if you can’t say that, because Mrs. Smith hasn’t bought yet, say, ‘Sign here, leaving room for Mrs. Smith. She is my next customer.’ If once you have a signature, you are safe. The form is a contract saying she will pay. Some women sign without knowing exactly what they are signing. But people never withdraw from the written contract. After that you must say in a gentle, firm voice, ‘Now in order to meet certain regulations, the company asks for a five-dollar deposit’—say the amount very low. (Always quote prices in a low, soft voice.)
“At this point she is likely to say, ‘But I have no money right now.’ Don’t hesitate. Suggest some way to get the money. Or offer to lend her the money. It will appear as a generous gesture. People in a house or an apartment are not likely to run away. Say, ‘I happen to have this five-dollar bill in my purse.’ (And you must always have it.) ‘I am going to lend it to you, as I see you want these books so much. The company does not authorize me to do this, but I will deposit my own five dollars in your name.’ Then you give her the bill, and let her place it in your hands. When the books are sent C.O.D. with her signature underneath and a bill for the full amount, including your loan, you will find she always pays.”
I began to feel rather tired and sleepy, and to wonder how many more minutes of sales talk Miss Fulton herself had. But now she folded up her notes and placed them on the desk, so she seemed to be nearing some conclusion.
“Just a word about the different bindings. Always begin with an ambition to sell the most expensive. It is the most beautiful and the best (and of course you know you are making more money for yourself as well as your company when you sell the most expensive binding). So take it for granted that she will want the most expensive binding. If you see you are failing, come down to the cheaper, and only at the last, the cheapest of all. That is better than nothing. If you see she never had any intention of taking anything else, you might even add, in the interest of selling, that you find her very wise.”
Miss Fulton ended the first lesson with the advice to sleep with the Bible on a table beside us and the sales talk under our pillow, for she said: “But never forget the motto of our company—Service, service to others. We all know that we are not only helping ourselves and the company in placing Universal Education in all American homes, but we are making the customer do what we know is good for her. We are spreading the light of knowledge and a true foundation of good Christian character.”
I began to understand better and better the seemingly divided policies of Western missionaries and Western business men. It all depended on which side you were on, the salesman or the customer, to get the rightness of this point of view.
5
The park which Mr. Lively boasted of as his back yard was very large, with streams and a small lake, woods, paths, and wild flowers. Of course it was open to the public as well as to the Livelys. One Sunday afternoon while I was walking there, I was much surprised to see George Jum coming toward me with his usual demure grin, and June beside him. George had dropped some hints in a letter that he might be coming to Boston, as June had a dancing engagement there. But I was unprepared to meet him quite so soon. We took a walk together around the park and George pointed out some nice nooks. He said next time he would bring a clean sheet to spread out on the grass, so no grass stains would spoil June’s white dress, and there they could sit or snooze and be comfortable. I felt slightly embarrassed until I remembered that it really wasn’t Mr. Lively’s back yard. We stopped before the Lively house for a moment and shook hands all around, but Jum refused to come in and meet my benefactors, as June had to get back to town for some engagement. He promised to come again at the earliest opportunity, however, and as George and June moved off arm in arm and very chummy, I looked up and saw Mrs. Lively peering at them out of one of the upstairs windows. Mrs. Lively promptly asked me about them. I told her it was my friend from New York and his fiancée, and did not understand why she still appeared so shocked. But her mouth closed tight and she said nothing.
Next day George came out alone, and spent some time in my room with me. He wanted to take me back with him to Boston, so I told Mrs. Lively I was going away for dinner. Again she said nothing, though I thought her expression looked somewhat surprised and aggrieved. In Boston after an early dinner we went to see June dance in one of the vaudeville circuits, with a Boston Korean in business there, who owned a car. Afterwards we got June and took an automobile drive. George urged me to come to New York for a visit and I thought it was a good idea. I had intended to come all along before settling down for the winter. He had to get another job and couldn’t do much for me, but I could stay at Mrs. Flo’s in his room and read his books. What decided me was that the Korean who owned a car was ready to drive us all back to New York. I got back to the Livelys’ very late that night—or rather, in the small hours of the morning. The Livelys had given me a key, and I went up very quietly. But next morning when I came down, Mrs. Lively put her handkerchief to her eyes and whenever she looked at me, she sniffed, with deep reproachful sighs. I was mystified, but began to make out that my fault was being away since yesterday afternoon. When Mr. Lively came, he said as much. I had left Mother with all those dishes to do. I seemed the combination of prodigal son and erring housemaid. There seemed to me no legal grounds for this. Nothing had been said about my having a job at the Livelys and no money had passed between us, except my ten dollars for the prospectus. And still the faultfinding was not over. After Mr. Lively was through, Mrs. Lively came to me alone, and bravely winking back the tears, she complained, “How is it? Daddy and I have been so wonderful to you, yet you cannot have any gratitude for us. This is very bad taste in you.” I did not know what to say. So I said nothing. My silence inspired her to say more. I had not only been out too late the night before, I had been out with that bad Korean boy. Neither Mr. Lively nor Mrs. Lively, I found, had any use for George.
“You ought not to associate with such a boy as that, Chungpa—a boy who smokes, drinks, swears. You are a good Christian boy. You have been taken into a good Christian family and treated like a son here. And I am sure that boy is not a good Christian boy.”
I could not truthfully say that George was. Of course, he had been very wonderful to me. However, his charity was not of their kind. I saw no way of making them understand each other. It was plain that George and Mrs. Lively ought never to have met, as being totally incompatible. To say nothing of June, the boneless dancer.
“George is Americanized,” I said. “Most Koreans are not like that. My friend has not much education, but he has a good heart.”
Mrs. Lively added at this point that she didn’t approve of my friend’s attitude toward girls. I wondered where she could have learned so much about him. Then I realized that when George was in my room talking, Mrs. Lively must have overheard. The anecdote George had been telling was entirely innocent, though perhaps George had made it sound otherwise. He had gone to call on a Korean girl who lived in a girls’ dormitory in Boston. This was like George, who was always very sociable. She was at least forty years old and very serious, a sincere Christian studying to go back to Korea and work there with the missionaries. George’s interest had been purely that of a compatriot. But because there was a rule on the wall saying that lights must not be switched on and off by the girls entertaining visitors, and that curtains of the alcove where they sat must not be drawn, George had amused himself by doing both. He spoke with great contempt of an institution with such rules on walls. Mrs. Lively had overheard some of this, for now she said:
“It’s all right for a boy to go with girls—not many; but with all girls you should speak decently, act nicely. When you visit a girl, you must always have somebody around. And always the door should be opened wide—so older people can see what is going on in there and certainly there should be a light in that room!”
George had not sold himself to Mrs. Lively. I saw that he had left a very bad impression.
“And I can tell you,” she burst out again, “it is not wise for an Oriental boy to go round with an American girl. He should marry his own kind, and she should marry hers.”
Elsie had followed us into the library and was listening to all this.
“Oh-h!” she cried, her mouth wide open in surprise. “Mother, if a Chinaman marries an American girl, what kind of baby would they have?” Elsie giggled. “Mother, wouldn’t that be funny? I should like to see it.”
Mrs. Lively went off at once and talked the whole thing over with Mr. Lively. Then Mr. Lively, too, had something more to say. With eyes unusually round and staring and face excited as when I had taken the wheel of the Cadillac car, Mr. Lively told me, “My dear boy, see here, I love you just as much as if you were my own boy. But you are getting wrong ideas. I don’t want to see you marry an American girl. Neither would I want to see Elsie marrying an Oriental. And all decent people are like that. It is not as the Lord intended.”
I was very solemn and silent and unable to open my mouth to say anything.