12

11.

"We started off together selling Estey organs. My employer
knew this was the first time I had ever attemped canvassing. House-
to-house selling of anything was a new experience for me. The boss
kept laughing at me and telling me to knock harder. He teased me un-
til we were both laughing when a woman came to the door at one house,
and our grins offended her. She slammed the door in our faces. He
went back and succeeded in getting the housewife to accept his apologies
after she had heard his explanation.

"We had a load of organs on the wagon once, when he hooked up
a couple of new bronchos. Those critters are troublesome to get broke
in. We had to whip one of them nearly to death, it seemed, before he
would start at all, but when he did start, he was running for dear life.
The boss said, 'Give me the lines!' All he did was keep them in the
road, and he let them run just as long and as fast as they wanted to.
They were willing to be good when they had run themselves down. We
never did have any more trouble with those two horses. It looked like
rain, so we stopped at a place and asked permission to leave an organ.
The woman's husband was not at home then but when we returned a few
days later he was very much around there. We started our sales talk
by thanking him for sheltering the organ for us. He interrupted us.

"'So, you're the ones that left it here! You're the very
ones I want to see. Get that ------- ----- ----- organ out of here
right now, ---- ---- -----.' The man had a gun. We loaded the organ
on the wagon and were about to start driving off when we noticed the
irate husband's hand was moving toward his gun, but my employer was

1697