"Why? Because stationers sell pencils!" "Y-yes, y-yes," said Larsen with a drawl, "and so do 5 and 10-cent stores--and department stores--and drygood stores--and drug stores. Why not hardware stores? Do you know, Boss, I think hardware people sleepy on the switch. We sell razors, and then let the fellers go to the drug store to buy powder an' soap an' brushes. We got a few brushes, but seem scared to show 'em. What happens? The druggist sells 'em the powder and then they give us a devil"--again I put up my hand, I was trying to break Larsen of swearing--"well, they give us a run for our money because they sell razors. I was up to New York last year, and I saw a drug store that had a picture frame department, and a line of toys, and brass and copper novelties--everything what we ought to sell and what was ours till we let these other stores swipe it from us." Here Larsen stopped for breath. This was a lot for him to say at one time, but he was "wound up" evidently for he resumed. "Look at automobiles! If we fellers had been alive, we would not have let them specialty places crop up all over the place. Hardware stores oughter have the garage. We oughter have the profits of automobile accessories. Some fellers are getting alive to the job, but some still say we oughten ter butt into somebody else's line!" He sneered as he said this. "If owned a hardware store I would sell anything I could get a profit on. I'd put in a line of pastry if I thought I could get away with it!" "Your forty-five years in the hardware trade hasn't got you into a rut then, Larsen?" I said with a smile. "You bet your life, nix, Boss! You are the first man that let me speak right out to him, and you know I don't mean to be--to be--you know what I mean--bossy like. But it gets my goat how hardware folks has let good things get away from them!" I had sometimes wondered why Larsen, with all his experience and knowledge, and many good ideas that I had found him to have, hadn't got farther ahead in the world. I had decided that it was perhaps because he was lacking in a certain independence of spirit--and while he spoke freely to me, and wasn't afraid to correct me, it was more because I was young and inexperienced compared with him, and because I had got so I didn't take offense at it. Perhaps under an older and sterner boss he would have been rather afraid to give expression to his views. However, he certainly was valuable to me. The conversation ended there, because the salesman from the Cincinnati Pencil Sharpener Company came in again. I didn't wait for him to say anything, but beckoned to him, and said: "I can give you a little time now. I was really busy before, and I am afraid I spoke a little more sharply than I meant to."