Earl Derr Biggers

“ Each night Billy sat in his room reading the latest breezy books on the art of salesmanship. Good enough books in their way, but their authors had not written them with Minerva Bluebottle in mind. Billy would sigh and falter. But in the morning he would rise with renewed energy, keen to resume his attack on the immovable body. He tried letters—one a day—each setting forth a separate golden advantage attached to the ownership of a car—preferably a Requa. He telephoned. He waylaid Miss Bluebottle on the street. Water, it is understood, rolls harmlessly from a duck's back. ”

“ Billy was saying, “I'd probably use another method. But this—this is California, and buying a car in California is different from buying one anywhere else Do you know what the difference is?”
“Well, it's a long haul,” said Mr. Firkins. “I suppose I'd have to pay more freight.”
“No, no!” protested Billy. “It's not a question of freight. It's a question of—romance.”
“Romance?”
“You've said it! Romance! Mr. Firkins, what man or woman in this workaday world too worn with care and worry not to be able on occasion to succumb to its thrill—its glamour?” ”

“ At the edge of the porch she paused and sniffed the air through thin, aristocratic nostrils. It was evidently just the air he had expected—the clear, clean air of the Berkshires, eminently satisfactory and correct. It had her approval, what more could it want?
“Carleton,” she said in a crisp, cool tone, “come and look at the dining-room fire. It is smoking again.”
“Yes, ma'am,” answered Carleton, and hurried up the walk.
Once more Miss Bluebottle sniffed. Was it possible that some foreign substance was contaminating the good Berkshire air? ”

“ Miss Minerva tried to keep vulgar boasting from her tone. “You know, I've come to believe that California is a great state.”
“But so different from Massachusetts,” said her friend smugly.
“Well, a change does us all good. I've made up my mind to go out there this winter and visit them.”
“Why, Minerva,” protested Mrs. Eldridge, “it's a frightful trip! You'll be days in smelly, germy Pullmans.”
“Nonsense!” Miss Bluebottle snapped. “I may be an old woman, but I'm down off the shelf, and down to stay. I agree with Billy—it's never too late to jazz things up.” ”

“ Eloise entered. “I've sold your aunt that car,” he announced. “And oh, by the way, Miss Bluebottle—there's one thing more. Eloise and I are going to be married.”
They waited for the explosion.
“It's a good idea,” said the surprising old woman. “I've thought so for some time. We New Englanders intermarry altogether too much. The families peter out. We need new enthusiasm, new life.” She unlocked a drawer of her desk and took out a worn old box.
Opening it, she held it before the astonished Billy. “I've been saving them for Eloise's husband. ”

“ Undoubtedly, for a strange young man stood on the sidewalk. She did not give the young man a look, but her whole attitude, as she poised there, accused her servant of an imperfect sweeping of the walk. The young man should have been gathered up with little old last year's leaves.
Billy Anderson stared for one frightened, apprehensive second. His heart sank.
“Massachusetts—there she stands!” he muttered, and turned to find his office as local representative of the Requa car. Later that morning he wrote the first of his letters to Miss Minerva Bluebottle. ”

“ Anderson.
“They're pretty deaf,” smiled Firkins. “I'll give you a letter to Miss Minerva. If you can sell her you're the wonder of the age.”
“I'll sell her,” announced Billy firmly.
“I wonder,” mused Mr. Firkins. “It'll be worth watching anyhow. Out here you're regarded as irresistible. I know myself that Minerva Bluebottle is immovable. When an irresistible force meets an immovable body, what happens then?”
“The cross,” smiled Billy Anderson, “will mark the spot where the immovable body once stood.”
II
BILLY ANDERSON landed in Stonefield early one April morning. ”

“ It's the toughest job in your line in America. I'm ashamed of myself, but I'm going to ask you to tackle it. The leader of the codfish aristocracy is an old friend of mine—Miss Minerva Bluebottle. I believe she came to Massachusetts on the Mayflower—or it may have been her great-grandparents.”
“You want me to sell Miss Bluebottle on the Requa?”
“I want you to try it. The rest of them follow her like sheep. Get her into one of our cars, and you'll sell forty more. But—don't be optimistic. I don't believe it can be done.” ”

“ There's plenty of romance everywhere, even in the everyday business of selling automobiles. Provided, of course, you look for it.”
“Son,” said Mr. Firkins, “I don't get you.”
“What I mean is this,” smiled Billy Anderson: “When I sell a man a Requa car out here in California, I sell him not merely a perfect piece of mechanism; I sell him revel and all the romance that goes with it. I sell him thousands of miles of smooth California roads; the roar of angry surf on the rocks below Monterey ”

“ When I step on that the good old Berkshire air jest sweeps over you, an'—an'—it's fine.”
“You poor old fool!” said Miss Minerva. “Now run to the barn and hitch up Romulus and Remus as fast as the Lord will let you. I shall be late for my drive. I'm not accustomed to being late.”
“Y-yes, ma'am,” said Carleton.
“I rely on you, young man”—Miss Minerva turned to the gloomy Billy—“to remove that—that thing—from before my door. And what can I say to convince you? I will not buy a car. I will not ride in a car. ”

“ They end by marrying again at the age of seventy—and hang the expense!
Anderson foraged up and down and in and out of the big tourist hotels, interviewing prospects. The psychology of salesmanship was his middle name. He sized each prospect up. Nine out of ten, having but their roll-top desks far to the east, were ripe for the romance talk. That was the talk they got.
On a warm and sunny morning late in January, Billy Anderson sat on the veranda of the Maryland Hotel, in Pasadena, opposite Mr Henry G. Firkins of Boston. Mr Firkins was rumored to be a prospect. He looked like a good one. ”

“ Firkins said. “Sit down. You haven't wasted anybody's time. Tell me, how long have you been handing people out the line of talk that you just gave me?”
“Oh, about three years.”
“Does it work?”
“Nearly always. Women have a lot to say about the selection of the family car—and that talk gets them. The men I go up against are here to relax—to have a good time—yes, I generally hook them too. There was only one man in the state of California sold more Requas than I did last year,” he added proudly. ”

“ Billy warmed up. “I want to create a picture, not of a wonderful piece of mechanism but of all the ownership of that piece of mechanism will procure for you out here in God's country.”
He stopped, for Mr. Firkins was staring at him coldly, appraisingly. Could he have made a mistake in his man? On rare occasions that happened. Certainly there was little answering gleam in the Firkins eye. Billy Anderson started in on another tack—regretfully. ”

“ My father's cigars—just as he left them when he passed on at the time of the Civil War.”
Billy took one of the cigars gingerly in his fingers. It crumbled immediately into a dry, brown dust.
“War quality,” he said softly. “They don't hold up.”
{ [dhr] } More than a year later Miss Bluebottle was out riding in her limousine with her friend, Mrs. Eldridge.
“Yes,” she said, “they've gone to California to live. I advised it. Billy was doing well in Boston, but he can get along even faster among his own people—and as for Eloise, the mild climate has made a new woman of her. ”

“ There is something in the air of that wonderful state, no doubt of it—a mild, soothing influence that makes poets of retired wholesale grocers. Hard-boiled widowers from Iowa farms come out to spend a pleasant winter—and not a cent more than they can help. ”

“ Because, though there are many places where a California booster doesn't make much of a hit, I don't know of any spot where his talk will fall flatter than in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The people there don't do any vulgar boasting, of course ”

“ And Billy Anderson had just dropped in to get acquainted—his second night in Stonefield!
“Young man, please be good enough to let me speak,” Miss Minerva said. “You are wasting your time. I will never enter an automobile, much less purchase one.” ”

“ It was only an experiment. There's nothing more to be said.”
“I fancy not. Good day.”
Billy Anderson went down the walk to his car. From a rear view he looked so unhappy and squelched that Eloise, at an upstairs window, pitied him. When he turned to enter the car she caught his eye and daring greatly, waved. He gravely lifted his hat and drove off. Miss Minerva's expression, as he had last seen it, reminded him that New England had furnished the inspiration for Hawthorne's story, The Great Stone Face.
IV
IN HIS room that night Billy Anderson admitted his defeat. ”