Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1887 — Beating the Market Man. [ARTICLE]

Beating the Market Man.

The sample dodge is an old and mean trick by which some sharpers in a small way beat' the market man out of a dinner riow r a-, d then. If you stay herelong enough you’ll see one of them. I usually get from two to a dozen visits from them every day. Many of them are men, old men, usually of respectable appearance, though occasionally you find a well dressed woman' in the business and now and then a child. It is worked like this: The sample fiend comes up when you are not busy and tell yon that lie has not laid in his winter stock of vegetables yet. And then, he talks about different kinds of potatoes and wants to see what we have got. He takes a out of each barrel, says he will try them all and see which he likes best, and moves coolly off. Of course we never see him again. Now that seems like a very small kind of a confidence, game for grown people to be at, doesn’t it? But there are scores of families who depend on just such little tricks for the chief part of their sustenance. Anyway, we have lots of them down here. I have known them to come and “work the racket” amT go away and then be at some othet stand on the same errand an hour later. I actually believe some of them gather enough vegetables in tliis way out of this market in a day to last them all, winter. Of course beggars we would fire out of here in a holy minute, and persons who didn’t look respectable we shouldn’t allow to take a sample. But what can you do when nicely dressed persons, who, for all you know, may own a brown stone block and be able to buy you out a thousand times, come alofig and work von this way ?—Stallkeeper in New lor A: Commercial Advertiser. The following naive promise was offered as an irresiSstible temptation to a fair inamorata: “I thank you, ” said the girl to her suitor, “but I can’t leave home.. lam a widow’s only darling; no husband can ever equal my parent in kindness." “She is kind,” replied the wboer; “but be my wife, and we will all live together, and see.if I don’t excel your mother !” • The teeth of am individual often vary greatly in hardness at intervals, and a Berlin physician, Dr.. W. D. Miller, is experimenting to show that this is due to a varying proportion of lime salts in the food.