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My travels continued season after season and year after year. And rather than growing tired of my hard work, I came to take more and more pleasure in it. I made many friends everywhere. There is hardly a town that I visit where there are not some men in the trade whom I look forward to seeing with a great deal of pleasure—men who have come to mean more to me than mere business acquaintances. I can speak very warmly of the generous-heartedness of the florists, many of whom have opened their homes to me in friendship and hospitality. This very element of friendship has been a great stimulant to me in carrying on my hard work—work which, to use the expression of a friend of mine, "would break down an ox."

Answering Business Letters by Pen One of my competitors used to remark that I "had an easy task of it," no financial responsibility, and no overhead expenses. I was carrying on a business, he said, with my office "practically under my hat." My hat, large though it was—and I generally wear a 7¼—was not large enough to carry my office. But I had my office in my pockets, practically in every pocket of my clothes. There were letters galore, which had to be answered. These letters would reach me at whatever point I happened to be, by way of Philadelphia. My wife attended to this end. After a hard day's work with the trade, it was a matter of every night occurrence to take up the work of conducting my "office." Out of the pockets would come the letters. I answered them by pen. All required immediate attention. Some were reassuring in their spirit; others anything but reassuring. Here was a case of a man receiving a batch of cuttings in frozen condition. Of course, I was to blame for it. The idea of sending him frozen cuttings for his good money! Others again found fault with Fuchsias that were packed in a manner unbecoming to an experienced packer; the plants thrown about the box in every way, and the stock practically ruined. Still others would take me to task about stock that should have been received two weeks before, and which had not as yet arrived, would say that unless such stock were forwarded at once I should cancel the order, and "we'll call it quits." It seems to be a quality of human nature to jump at conclusions, and to readily affix blame, regardless of circumstances or conditions responsible for the adverse turn of affairs.

One man, I recall (a man who, by the way, is one of my staunchest friends today,) took me to task for disappointing him about four hundred Carnation cuttings which he was to receive about the middle of January, and which reached him by the 10th of February. I cannot exactly recall the words of his letter, but the gist of it was, that it served him right; he might have known that I was not the man to entrust an order of Carnation cuttings to, that had he ordered them direct from the grower he was sure he would have received them by return of mail. In this particular case, I made an exception from my general rule, which was to appease a customer. I wrote him a much stronger letter than I thought I was capable of, giving him a piece of my mind and assuring him that I could well get along without his trade, and that in the future he should send all his orders to whomever he saw fit.

And while on this point, it may not be amiss to say a few words about some men in the trade, luckily in the minority, who deem it a wise business policy to