"AMBASSADORS OF COMMERCE."

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7110, 23 April 1910, Page 9

"AMBASSADORS OF COMMERCE."

"The. Random Recollections of a Commercial Traveller.” London: Skorratt and Hughes. Price* ss. There is a naivete and a sincerity about these memories of an old “Commercial” which arc nor a little engaging. The author evidently regards his calling with honest pride ami affection, and although tbeso records of his many years’ experiences “ou Hie road" u-ouid have oeeu non© tho worse lor :omu slight employment of an editorial muc-pcncii, they contain many capital anecdotes and much idiKliy aud namely philosophy. The author uas ineiuueu in his guiu-ry of peu-p-ortraits aimo.T every possime type of commercial tra\cller. He' shows us the zealous energetic man, always ou the qui vivc lor nueu.'CSii, happily combining tact wim tae now ail decenary "nust.e," a man wuoiu it is a pleasure for a customer to welcome when ue pays ms tegular visit, a iuuu who is umvercoliy respected by employers, customers, by hotelkeepers, waiters and porters —in. a woru, tuo model traveller, n-hso he snows us the lazy, impioviueut, tippling a hero, mayoc, wita tno "smoke-room crowd,'"' but a man who is not to bo reUed upon, a man. careless with tne transcription of ins orders, aud erring m a sour© or more ways omy to© weu known in tno calling. Gi tue oia-tuue traveller, a great sticiuer lor ms nguts ana privileges in tne hosceiries he peculiarly affected, a murtuiet with tho “young hands ' of the calling, a dictator in the

“commercial room/' feared more than beloved by hotel waiters and porters, but a good sound man of business‘for all lus insistence upon precedent, the author gives another weii-urawii portrait. Owmg to some extent, to Dickens and Trollope, and other v ictonan novelists, it was at one time to imagine the average “C/i."—“bagmah ' was the term used, cometiines in familiarity, oiten iu coiUciiipc—a* . being ' too frequently a peculiarly vulgar and offensive ’ person. Lut a lew black sheep snouid not he permitted to give a whoic nock a bad n;uiie, and taken "by and large," as Aiark Twain s Mississippi pilot would put it, tii© old tmio "G.T." w:;u> a very good fellow, a little too given may be, to Gargantuan eating and drinking, but a man who led -an.active, luuxiworking life, was ghherally a husband and father, a? kind frioml and honest comrade, and la*t but assuredly not least, a zealous aud industrious, servant. TJi© author of the book before me tells many pleasant stone* of more or less notable men ho has met on "tno road,"'and sketches in a spirit of kindly satire some of their small foibles and peculiarities. H© has evidently a worm affection, in which I heartily coincide, for the old-fashioned but comfortable* must of th© English provincial towns, hosteirics where a guest was Mr So-and-80, a person in? furthering whose “comfort the proprietor and tho head waiter were wont to take a personal interest, instead of being a mere number, as ho is in the vast caravanserais, with their Swiss or Italian managers, their Teuton waiters, and their Swedish housemaids, which aro to-day so mmierous all over the Old Country, aud iu which tlie average sojourner feels about as much at home as he would be iu a desert. There is scarcely an English city or town of any importance which is not made th© scone of some amusing or instructive episode ia which the author or some of his acquaintances have taken part, and many of his anecdotes of the heroes, oddities and “eccentrics" of the “road" are extiem'Oy amusing, Ouv author, too. has a distinctly literary turn, ami his pages are garnished with a singular plenitude of well-chosen aud often extremely apt

poetical quotations. His book is one which doe* credit both to his heart, mind and memory, and although its first appeal mud, necessarily bo to Old Country readers —rho conditions of the C.l.s life being so different there to what they are in those colonics—our New Zealand "ambassadors of commerce" will mid much in iU pages that they will, I make Uo doubt, most cheerfully vote both entertaining and instructive. Of coursethc book contains not a few very familiar yarns, such, for instance, as the timeworn story of the Hebrew firm which wrote to its traveller, one Air Joseph Einstein, that "vat we vant is orders, not an exbonce ago out/’ and wbicli advised the dcspatcii of "two box zigars: one costed "s, de oder 3rf fid. i’ou can sciimoke de 3s fid box, and gif de oders to your customers," etc., etc. But m such a collection a few are pardonable, especially when, a* in this I case, they arc accompanied by eo many i olhcis which are not only new but area* | brightly told us tney aic infiereutly amueiug.