NOTES BY A QUIET MAN.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXIX, Issue 225, 23 September 1895, Page 2

NOTES BY A QUIET MAN.

[The following " Note " was crowded ovt of Saturday's issue ]

I remember once living in lodgings in a certain town in this colony. My landlady was a careful woman, not given to reokless expenditure. One day I was sitting in my room when a man knocked at the front door. He was agent for a sort of wire door-mat, which I afterwards had reason to curse. My landlady wont to the door, and when the agent told his business she said that sho did not require any door-mats, as she had plenty of tho old-fashioned sort. However, he would not take no for an answer, and I listened with interest to tho conversation, guessing what the result would be. In the end of course he sold her a door-mat, and a great nuisance it was. What I should like to know is the process of eduoation whioh enables men to induoe their fellow oreatiures to buy things whioh they do not want. There is something to be said for insurance agents, as though some people do not wish to insure their lives it is a' very good thing that they should do so, but how about book fiends ? I have known men and, women who in other respects were thoroughly sensible people who have paid large sums for rubbishy, flashy, ill bound, and ill printed editions of Amerioan books Which would not have been worth having if they had beon well got up. The Picturesque Atlas stood on rather a different footing, as tho earlier numbers; 'whioh were the only ones I ever saw, at all events were very oreditable : but swarms of people in this oase ehtered, on the persuasion of strangers, 'into obligations /.whioh they bitterly regretted .afterwards. A certain friend of mine once said to me that no man opuld be at once a suoeessf uljnsurahoe agent and a gentleman, and o'sf'tainly the ways of most canvassers are highly objectionable, . but I wish I had their powers of persuasion.' I suppose they take for I heir model the importunate widow who won her oase from the unjust judge who feared not God neithei; regarded roan, -<"':, ,*, ; "-'- ..