I wonder more retail merchants don't retaliate in this way on merchants in other lines who make this kind of competition. Perhaps they don't because they don't want to offend a fellow townsman. They forget, however, that their fellow townsman doesn't hesitate to offend them. Pat Burke came into the store that afternoon and introduced himself to me, saying, "Roger Burns sent me, as he wanted me to know you." He was a short, thick-set man, and spoke on generalities for a little while. "How's business coming along?" I asked him. "Very well indeed," he said. "How did you find the business when you took it over from Stigler?" Without any expression on his face at all he said, "Just about what we expected." "What do you think of Stigler?" I asked him. He didn't say anything for a minute, but let his eyes roam around the store. "I certainly like the way you have your electrical goods displayed, Mr. Black," he said. "You have a good trimmer, whoever he is." "I do it myself." "The dickens you do!" he commented. "Well, that is one of the most attractive displays I have seen in a long while. I want to compliment you. If you were in Boston or New York you would give up running a store of your own, and be head of the decorative department of some big department store. Do you know that some of those head window trimmers make as much as five thousand dollars a year?" We got on a general discussion of window trimming. "Well, I've got to get back to the store," he finally said. "When you have an evening at liberty I should like to have a chat with you. I think we ought to be able to help each other." It was not until he had gone that I realized that he had never answered my question relative to Stigler. He put it off as neatly as anything I ever saw. CHAPTER XXXVIII A LOGICAL PROFIT-SHARING PLAN I had pledged myself to a profit-sharing plan with my small staff for the year beginning June 1, since my fiscal year would end with the last day of May. Think of it! By the end of May I would have finished my first year in business. When I looked back at the year's experiences, I realized that I surely had learned a lot in that short time. I had learned more each month than I had learned in all the time I was a clerk. The reason was, I suppose, because I _had_ to learn, whereas, while a clerk, I had had neither the inclination to learn nor the encouragement. I think bosses make a mistake in not encouraging their people to study the business. Now, I want to tell about my profit-sharing plan. For almost two weeks I had been spending nearly every night with Jock McTavish, the accountant who had helped me out so much in the past. I had told him what I wanted, and we had worked out a plan between us. Jock was Scotch and old-fashioned. I sometimes called him glue fingers, because whenever he got his hand on money it stuck to him.