“Well, perhaps the best answer to that is the fact that our firm sends out the circular to-day just as I wrote it eight years ago. But I started to speak of the large amount of information you find in circulars and advertising nowadays. Advertising is much more of a science than it was. Pick up a decent trade paper and the ordinary advertisement is full of shrewd points for those handling the goods, that cannot help being of immense value to retailers. And I can call your attention to this: these advertisements, these shrewd ones, are always written by men who have been traveling salesmen. Such men know the points that ought to be brought out.” “Yes,” said the dry-goods man, “how is this, cut from the advertisement of a list of five-cent counter goods. Don't you believe the man who wrote this knew the soft side of a retailer?” And he read: HOW TO DO IT. Bundle up some of the unseasonable goods that are taking up valuable counter space, and put them away on the shelves. By this economy of space, and with the possible addition of a temporary counter, you have gained room enough to admit of the introduction of a “5c, 10c or 25c counter.” The next thing to do is to send to some reliable jobber for a bill of staple household sellers, with which you can mix hundreds of articles from your own stock; then send out a little circular (“dodger”) to the over-anxious inhabitants, telling them of a few of the articles to be found on your “Cheap Counter,” and they will respond as readily as though you had sent them free tickets to the circus. It matters not that they have not seen one of these counters before, there will be the same rush--the same scramble for first choice--the same telling of friends about bargains bought; and instead of sitting around waiting for the advent of spring, you will have pocketed a nice profit from your cheap counter, besides having worked off any amount of odds and ends that might have been in your store five years, and would have remained five years longer had not this modern wonder made an exit for them. “That sounds mighty like Ed. Butler,” said the dry-goods man. CHAPTER XX.