第30章

Our idea is for you to select about a hundred of the young fellows who're working their way through here, and train them in your methods of approaching people.Then you'll take them to Wisconsin and Minnesota and send them out, each man to a district you select for him.In that way you'll help a hundred young men to earn a year at college and you'll make a good sum for yourself--two or three times what you made last summer."Scarborough had intended to get admitted to the bar in June, to spend the summer at an apprenticeship in a law office and to set up for himself in the fall.But this plan was most attractive--it would give him a new kind of experience and would put him in funds for the wait for clients.The next day he signed an advantageous contract--his expenses for the summer and a guaranty of not less than three thousand dollars clear.

He selected a hundred young men and twelve young women, the most intelligent of the five hundred self-supporting students at Battle Field.Pierson, having promised to behave himself, was permitted to attend the first lesson.The scholars at the Scarborough, School for Book Agents filled his quarters and overflowed in swarms without the windows and the door.The weather was still cool; but all must hear, and the rooms would hold barely half the brigade.

"I assume that you've read the book," began Scarborough.He was standing at the table with the paraphernalia of a book agent spread upon it."But you must read it again and again, until you know what's on every page, until you have by heart the passages I'll point out to you." He looked at Drexel--a freshman of twenty-two, with earnest, sleepless eyes and a lofty forehead; in the past winter he had become acquainted with hunger and with that cold which creeps into the room, crawls through the thin covers and closes in, icy as death, about the heart."What do you think of the book, Drexel?"The young man--he is high in the national administration to-day--flushed and looked uneasy.

"Speak frankly.I want your candid opinion.""Well, I must say, Mr.Scarborough, I think it's pretty bad.""Thank you," said Scarborough; and he glanced round."Does anybody disagree with Mr.Drexel?"There was not a murmur.Pierson covered his face to hide his smile at this "jolt" for his friend.In the group round one of the windows a laugh started and spread everywhere except to seven of the twelve young women and to those near Scarborough--THEYlooked frightened.

"I expected Mr.Drexel's answer," began Scarborough."Before you can sell Peaks of Progress each of you must be convinced that it's a book he himself would buy.And I see you've not even read it.You've at most glanced at it with unfriendly eyes.This book is not literature, gentlemen.It is a storehouse of facts.

It is an educational work so simply written and so brilliantly illustrated that the very children will hang over its pages with delight.If you attend to your training in our coming three months of preliminary work you'll find during the summer that the book's power to attract the children is its strongest point.Imade nearly half my sales last summer by turning from the parents to the children and stirring their interest."Pierson was now no more inclined to smile than were the pupils.