These gentlemen practically live on the trains:
they eat, sleep, and do their business while travelling.
One of them told me that in one month he had covered 38,000 miles,
and that he had not been back to his firm for three months.
There is no doubt that the American people are active, strenuous workers.
They will willingly go any distance, and undertake any journey,
however arduous, if it promises business; they seem to be always on the go,
and they are prepared to start anywhere at a moment's notice.
An American who called on me a short time ago in Shanghai
told me that when he left his house one morning at New York,
he had not the slightest notion he was going to undertake
a long journey that day; but that when he got to his office
his boss asked him if he would go to China on a certain commission.
He accepted the responsibility at once and telephoned to his wife
to pack up his things. Two hours later he was on a train
bound for San Francisco where he boarded a steamer for China.
The same gentleman told me that this trip was his second visit to China
within a few months.
American salesmen are clever and capable, and well know how to recommend
whatever they have to sell. You walk into a store just to look around;
there may be nothing that you want, but the adroit manner
in which the salesman talks, and the way in which he explains
the good points of every article at which you look,
makes it extremely difficult for you to leave the store
without making some purchases.
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