“I was surprised, Doctor, at the moderate fee. If you had said $5,000 I would have paid it just as quickly as I did the $1,000.” This man got well. The state of his mind had a great deal to do with his recovery. The treatment was beneficial, but he had made up his mind that he was going to recover, and that was a great factor. Allowing that the psychological moment is reached at the first meeting, the caller being in a receptive mood and asking for the terms of treatment, which is often the case. Don’t be modest. It is easier to lower the terms than to raise them. If the figure you name is objected to as being beyond the means of the caller there is always a way out. Then is the time to say: “The figure I have named, $1,000, is the regular fee, Mr. ——, but I can readily understand that to pay this amount might work a hardship in your case. We are not doing a charity practice. We can’t afford to. And if we were I am positive you are not the kind of a man who would take advantage of it. You want to pay for what you get, provided it is within your means. “In many respects your case is a most peculiar one, and I would like to undertake it as there is every reason to look for wonderful results. Now I am going to make 138you a proposition in strict confidence, and with the distinct understanding that it remains a secret between the two of us. I will make the fee $500, and, when you are restored to health, you are to write me a letter which I may show privately to other people who are suffering in the same way. But, under no conditions are you to tell anybody what fee I charged.” Jump at the proposition? Does a hungry fish take the bait? He thinks that he is getting something for nothing; that a special exception has been made in the matter of a fee because the doctor is confident of restoring him to health and wants the credit and reputation that would attach to such a cure. During all this conversation the doctor has cleverly refrained from alluding to such a thing as a cure in direct words. In no manner has he committed himself in this respect, and yet the bait has been so skilfully dangled that the caller can get no other impression than that a cure is sure to be obtained. Then there is another class of men who will object to any fee that may be named in the hope of getting a reduction. In most instances men of this class are abundantly able to pay, but are “close.” If gold dollars were offered to them at 90 cents apiece they would want the price lowered so as to save something. When a man of this kind is encountered, and the doctor is bent on getting the fee he has named, the best thing to do is to make him ashamed. This may be done without offending them. One notably successful case taker, famous the world over for his ability to get large fees, made it a practice to say: