Success
She walked over to my book shelves, pulled out a copy of
Emerson's Essays, and for the next ten minutes she talked about Emerson's
essay on Compensation so interestingly that I lost sight of the roll of
magazines that she carried. (She was neutralizing my mind some more.)
Incidentally, she gave me a sufficient number of new ideas about Emerson's
works to provide material for an excellent editorial.
Then she asked me which magazines I received regularly, and after I told her she smiled as she began to unroll her bundle of magazines and laid them on the table in front of me. She analyzed her magazines one by one, and explained just why I should have each of them. The Saturday Evening Post would bring me the cleanest fiction; Literary Digest would bring me the news of the world in condensed form, such as a busy man like myself would demand; the American Magazine would bring me the latest biographies of the men who were leading in business and industry, and so on, until she had covered the entire list.
But I was not responding to her argument as freely as she thought I should have, so she slipped me this gentle suggestion: "A man of your position is bound to be well informed and, if he isn't, it will show up in his own work!"
She spoke the truth!
Her remark was both a compliment and a gentle reprimand. She made me feel somewhat sheepish because she had taken inventory of my reading matter - and six of the leading magazines were not on my list. (The six that she was selling.) Then I began to "slip" by asking her how much the six magazines would cost. She put on the finishing touches of a well-presented sales talk by this tactful reply:
"The cost?
Why, the cost of the entire number is less than you receive for a single page of the typewritten manuscript that you had in your hands when I came in." Again she spoke the truth.
And how did she happen to guess so well what I was getting for my manuscript? The answer is, she didn't guess - she knew! She made it a part of her business to draw me out tactfully as to the nature of my work (which in no way made me angry).
She became so deeply interested in the manuscript, which I had laid down, when she came in, that she actually induced me to talk about it. (I am no saying, of course, that this required any great amount of skill or coaxing, for have I not said that it was my manuscript?)