He and Fred Barlow had gone through college together and they were good pals. He happened to be visiting the old man Barlow when Larsen was taken sick, and it was through Barlow that he had come to me. Martin told me that he would be glad to get some small store experience, so I had hired him and he had been working like a Trojan at $8.00 a week. His father was a banker in New York, and I had heard that he had been a little bit disappointed in Charlie because he didn't take to banking; but Charlie said that what he liked best was retail merchandising, and he had spent a great deal of time and money preparing himself for such a career. When Larsen came back I told Martin I didn't see how I could keep him, but he pointed out to me that our sales had been increasing, and that, as Larsen was not yet well, it would be putting too much of a burden on him, especially as we would really be short-handed. So I had kept him on and I was rather glad I had, for his college training certainly helped us at our Monday night meeting. It surely had seemed good to get my small staff around me again at a Monday night meeting. Mater had taken over Betty's usual task, and sent in coffee and doughnuts, which quickly went the way that all good coffee and doughnuts should. It was really a treat to see Jimmie eat doughnuts. I didn't believe he did eat them; he just inhaled them. Of course, Jimmie was there with all the importance of a young boy who had been taken into the confidence of his grown-ups. Jones and Larsen were there, as well as Martin. What a contrast there was between Martin and Larsen--Larsen sadly in need of a shave, in rough home-spun clothes, sitting in his shirt sleeves with the wristlets of a red woolen sweater showing underneath them; and Martin, who always looked like the last word off Fifth Avenue, in spotless linen, narrow sharp features, with the air of a regular debonair young man about town. These two people, the exact opposites of each other, had quickly grown to be good friends. The one had gained his knowledge through more than two-score years of rather bitter experience; the other had gained his through five years of specialized training. Martin, the trained man, had the keen analytical sense which only comes from training. Larsen, through intuition, backed by practical experience, blundered more or less after the more quick-thinking Martin. Yet theory and practice thought pretty much alike. It certainly showed to me the advantage of training, for Martin had mastered in five years all that Larsen had learned in forty. The matter for discussion at our meeting had been, "How to increase the amount of sales to each customer?" Frankly, it was Martin who solved our problem for us, and six ways were developed whereby we could increase the sales of each customer.