"It eez imposseeble." When the American became insistent all the French salesmen resigned in a body. This objection was purely temperamental. If there is one thing above all others that puts a Frenchman into panic it is publicity of his personal affairs. He believes that the greatest crime in the world is to be found out, whether in business or in love. There was nothing perhaps to hide in a biography of his daily work, but it was the wrong tack to take. In the same way militant and masterful salesmanship also fails. A man may be a crack seller in Kansas City, Denver, and all points West, but he finds to his sorrow that his dynamic process goes straight over the head of a Frenchman. He refuses to be driven; he wants time for mature reflection and an opportunity to talk the thing over with his wife. This irritating attempt to force uncongenial methods on French buyers is duplicated in a corresponding lack of plain everyday intelligence in meeting the simplest French requirements. Indeed, the omissions of Americans are wellnigh incredible. Take the matter of postage to France. The head of a great French concern made this statement to me in sober earnestness: "Won't you be good enough to beg American manufacturers to put their office boys through a course of instruction in postal rates between Europe and the United States?" When I asked him the reason he said: "We sometimes get twenty letters from America in one mail and each comes under a two cent stamp. This has been going on for years despite our repeated protest about it. Some months my firm was required to pay from ten to fifteen dollars in excess postage." Now the amount of money involved in this transaction is the slightest feature: it is the chronic laxity and carelessness of the American business man that gets on the Frenchman's nerve. Here is another case in point: A well known French firm has been writing weekly letters for the past eighteen months to a New England factory trying to persuade the Manager to mark his export cases with a stencil plate and in ink rather than with a heavy lead pencil, as the latter marking is almost obliterated by the time the shipment arrives at Havre. In fact, this French firm went to the extent of sending a stencil and brush to New England to be used in marking the firm's cases. But the old pencil habit is too strong and a weekly hunt has to be instituted on the French docks for odd cases containing valuable consignments of machine tools. Vexatious delays result. It is just one more nail that the heedless American manufacturer drives into the coffin of his French business. These incidents and many more that I could cite, are merely the approach, however, to a succession of mistakes that make you wonder if so-called Yankee enterprise gets stage fright or "cold feet" as soon as it comes in contact with French commercial possibilities. Let me now tell the prize story of neglected trade opportunity.