A HIGH ART.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 172, 29 October 1910, Page 4

A HIGH ART.

particular. We have heard of only one occasion on which a life insurance canvasser of the most profound cleverness was nonplussed. He had angled his | farmer for half a day, had pictured him lyine dead under a load of firewood and liis "sorrowing wife and family left to starve. The" farmer protested that he had not the money to pay the premium. The agent, in a burst of generosity, exclaimed, "I will pay the first premium myself.'' The farmer pondered deeply, and then hurled his bomb: "How am I to know.'' he asked gravely, "that you will keep the payments up?" One of the stock questions of a business man who has been insured for forty years to the canvasser is: "Are you insured yourself?" It takes a deal of answering sometimes. Two or three days ago a judgment debtor was before a magistrate. The amount claimed was £5 17s. The value of the article purchased in the loiiir ago was 10s 6d. The debtor was a milker"and the article purchased was a directory! The magistrate asked the milker what on earth he wanted a directory for, and the poor chap replied that the' "canvasser had forced it on him." The magistrate refused to make an order.

One is entitled to be a little siispieious of the men who travel the country—but of course not in Taranaki—who reel off a story about being ollicers in the mercantile marine and who have been able to obtain rolls of the most beautiful cloth, on which duty has not been paid. The housewife is naturally bound to believe the officer because he wears a peak cap, and the people who happen to strike these officers in various parts of New Zealand are surprised at the variation in the story. The city story is not elaborate, but the country story is burnished in a high degree. The gift of a ready tongue is a veritable "Bullfinch" to many people. One of the few weapons that the canvassed person has when approached to buy something he doesn't want is to try to sell the canvasser something. Offer"him the office table at a startling reduction, or induce him to purchase the typewriter. If the distracted housewife pursued the canvasser down the garden imploring him to purchase the kitchen chairs, or to take some shares in her husband's company, she would have some little revenge for the many hours she spares to listen to the floods of doorstep oratory.