at his own price, not at _his_ asking, but on _the suggestion of the seller_, prompted by his own politely obvious unwillingness to have the seller part with his merchandise at any price not entirely acceptable to himself. The incompetent man, on the other hand, is presuming, exacting, and unfeeling. He not only desires, but asserts the desire, in the very teeth of the seller, to have something which that seller has predetermined that he shall not have. He fights a losing game from the start. He will probably begin by depreciating the goods which he knows, or should know, that the seller has reason to hold in high esteem. He will be likely enough to compare them to some other goods which he knows to be inferior. He will thus arouse a feeling of dislike, if not of anger, where his interest should teach him to conciliate and soothe; and if he sometimes carry his point, his very victory is in effect a defeat, since it procures him an increased antipathy. This the judicious buyer never does. He repudiates, as a mere half-truth, and a relic of barbarism, the maxim, "There is no friendship in trade." "But," you are asking, "do only those succeed who are born to these extraordinary endowments? And those who do succeed, are they, in fact, each and all of them, such wonderfully capable men as you have described?" If by success you mean mere money-making, it is not to be denied that some men do that by an instinct, little, if at all, superior to that of the dog who smells out a bone. There are exceptions to all rules; and there are chances in all games, even in games of skill. Lord Timothy Dexter, as he is facetiously called, shipped warming-pans to the West Indies, in defiance of all geographical objections to the venture, and made money by the shipment,--not because warming-pans were wanted there, but because the natives mistook and used them for molasses-ladles. It must be owned that a portion of the successful ones are _lucky_,--that a portion of them use the blunt weapon of an indomitable will, as an efficient substitute for the finer edge of that nice tact and good manners which they lack. Their very rudeness seems to commend them to the rude natures which confound refinement with trickery and assume that brutality must needs be honest.