Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/138

 what you have said will not need further investigation or explanation before it is clear to the man who is to receive it.

I have learned nothing more fully during the years that I have done business with various sorts of people than that surprise or the unexpected is the most compelling influence one can use with people. If I call a student to my office to talk over things with him, he has worked out before he comes in all that I am going to say to him and what his defense is to be. If he has been derelict, he has an adequate explanation; if he has been absent from classes, he has a dozen legitimate excuses on his tongue's end. My only hope of getting anywhere is to present my case in a way for which he is not prepared. A clever book salesman comes to see me once a year, and though I think before he makes his annual call that I am all steeled and set for him, I invariably fall, and yet he has never really asked me to buy. He studies my personal tastes, he lays his wares before me alluringly and always in a different manner from the one he employed in any previous year. His coming fascinates me, for I am always anxious and