As a retail salesman, however, this exceedingly interesting young man did not make a high mark. One’s general impression of him “on the floor” is a picture of a happy student, standing, entranced, frequently with his back to the door (which theoretically he should have been watching for incoming customers), day after day engrossed in perusing a rare edition of “Madame Bovary.” One sensational feat of business he did as a clerk perform. Misreading, in his newness to these hieroglyphics, the cypher in which in stores the prices of books are marked on the fly leaves of the volumes, he sold to a lady a hundred-and-fifty-dollar book for a dollar and a half. This transaction being what is termed a “charge sale,” not a “cash sale,” and amid some excitement the matter being immediately rectified, disaster for the amateur salesman was averted. At Scribner’s a close friendship was, almost at once, formed between the youthful poet and another then unpublished writer acting at that time in the same capacity of clerk--a friendship which was never diminished by the numerous shiftings of Kilmer’s fields of activity, the multitudinous, diverse and ardent interests which he acquired in an ever-mounting measure, and the steady addition of numberless friends of all classes who eagerly yielded him their devotion. It was rather a friendship which was continually cemented by increasing and closer bonds. It was a part of Kilmer’s spirit to make his first friend in his literary life a sharer as far as was possible in each new success of his own. One among many, innumerable, instances of this was his contriving, by his influence with the editor (at that time another intimate, Louis H. Wetmore), to work his friend into a position somewhat rivaling his own at the period (1912–1913) when he was the bright and shining star reviewer for the _New York Times Review of Books_. The regular Tuesday lunching together of these two friends when their offices were widely separated became, at least in their own fancy, an American literary institution. The two were united in all the symbols of affection between men. And at seasons of rejoicing and adversity the Kilmer house was to his friend as his own. It is to this one who among all of Joyce Kilmer’s friends owes him the greatest debt of friendship has come the supreme trust of writing, within the power of his many and conscious limitations, this Memoir, and editing these volumes.