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AVE went to Chicago and spent an enlightening afternoon, as an afternoon following the forming of a first partnership is likely to be; for now he had his money up with Snelgrove; there was no getting it back; and his partner acquainted him cheerily and familiarly with certain little difficulties which had not been mentioned before.

Mr. Snelgrove was an optimistic gentleman and profound from personal experience in the automobile "game," as he always called it. He had been in the game "practically since the first whistle blew," or since nineteen three, when he gave up a bicycle agency and repair shop on the south side "to put out the crack car of the day."

He liked to relate both his triumphs and disasters impartially.

"Just snatched small change at first. If a man sold a dozen two thousand dollar 'jobs,' they put his picture in the paper those days. Then the public began riding and the big money began to run. I got my big sales-room down on Michigan Avenue, one of the first on the row, and in nineteen nine wired my factory the biggest order the Western Union ever took out of Chicago for cars in our price class. In nineteen ten I just exactly doubled that order, sent my check with the order to pay deposit on the shipment