thinks my scheme is the gnat's elbow and nothing will do but he's got to run me up to his father with it. Mr. Brock listens to my sales talk, asks a few questions about one thing and the other, chews on his always unlit cigar for a minute, cocks a eye at me—and then starts the ball rolling with a check for twenty-five thousand dollars! Spence comes across with a thousand. When I got outside their house I capered around till should anybody of saw me they would of took it for granted I'm crazy—and I am crazy with joy!
Then I begin a house-to-house canvass among the people I know in Drew City. I put everything I got into my selling argument, changing it for almost every person I hit for a contribution, or rather for a investment, as I hope to pay interest which will make the First National Bank's 4 per cent look silly!
I play up to each one's weakness as I know it, show 'em figures on the gate receipts of some carefully selected championship fights, promise I won't take my share of the purse till everybody has got their dough back with a handsome profit, and wind up by showing 'em Mr. Brock's name at the head of the list for that twenty-five grand. They couldn't laugh that off and it generally sold 'em!
A twenty-minute talk lands Kale Yackley for a five-hundred-buck subscription. My next stop is Ajariah Stubbs. Time put in, one hour ten minutes; result, $2,500. I take Lem Garfield for five hundred; Red Fish has a thousand bucks' worth of faith in me; another grand comes easy from a pool at Nickmeyer's Garage, and that's the way it goes all along the line.
