Now indeed I began to realise, in spite of what I so often read in the daily papers, something of the optimistic pushfulness of the commercial traveller. The shop had not been open very long when they began to call, and such was their power of , so eager were they to sell me something, however little, so as to get a foot in as it were, that I often felt grateful that I was away all day. I left orders that nothing was to be bought, but on the occasions when I happened to be at home I felt so soft and yielding in the hands of these pushers of their employer's that I could not but pity my wife, charged as she was with the duty of saying no to men who refused to recognise such a word as belonging to any language.  
They were so polite, so gentlemanly, so pathetic, and so well informed. They seemed able to talk upon any subject, although they all had a marvellous of twisting any topic round to the one they were interested in. The luxuriance and fruitfulness of their imaginations, too, always impressed me, and although I always deprecated them wasting their time over so a tradesman as I was I had a good deal of joy in their company, bright and cheerful as it always was. But I have also to confess that they were dangerous counsellors. Their pleading for small orders, just one line, their utter to the payment, making it so fatally easy to get into debt, I look back upon now with horror. And yet I suppose it is of the essence of business, this hopeful airy outlook upon life. I now see that I might have stocked my shop with the choicest products, might have made it glow again and—but never mind—that comes later. I am not, never was, a strong-minded person; except in certain very restricted directions I am exceedingly to take the line of least resistance, but I do feel just a little up with the knowledge that I was so often able to say no and stick to it in spite of all the blandishments of those drummers.
 
I had been about a year in the shop when I realised that I could no longer expect to do ............