“Well,” said the merchant, with a twinkle in his eye. “I think you ought to do well; there have only been thirteen grocery drummers here today.”
The young man’s enthusiasm was somewhat dampened.
One of the bugbears of the New England traveling salesman who must cover his route at frequent intervals, is the midwinter blizzard. It often requires a good many card games to fill in the waits. These episodes are not without amusing details, but one of these unwelcome events developed little that was humorous.
Late one winter afternoon, two salesmen left a nice comfortable hotel in a little town because the path of duty led them to take a narrow gauge road up into the mountains. It was getting dark, had been snowing heavily all day and the wind was just beginning to take part in the program, frisking the feathery snow, here and there, just to show what an innocent thing a winter breeze can be. But when the train had gotten out of the way from the valley town and was making its laborious way up a steep grade into the mountains, the real force of the wind began to be apparent. The cars would rock back and forth on their narrow carriages, but as there was no record that they had ever actually capsized, everything was cheerful enough in the smoking car. After a few miles, progress began to be very slow, as drifts had accumulated on the track. Finally a trainman came through and said that “Jim” was in mighty bad shape and he didn’t know whether he could stick it out to the end of the line or not. Certain questioning brought out the fact that “Jim” was the engineer who had a high fever and was almost delirious. The air became colder and colder and the wind increased. After several hours, however, the short run of thirty miles was accomplished and the two travelers started for the hotel. It developed, that the hotel was not ostensibly open for business, the proprietor having become peeved at repeated searching parties working in the interest of prohibition. One of the travelers, however, knew the ropes and led the way around through the back kitchen where the low browed graduate of a New York dive, who conducted the tavern, was found and he reluctantly agreed to provide rooms, though they proved to be absolutely without heat.