The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-10-23

| this razor from has been in every city
of any size in this country and knows
| people in all of them. He's never bur
dened with any great amount of bag
| gage, so that he can leave town at a
moments notice. A fair sized satchel is
all he needs. In this he carries his
sWattystone, his razors and his cloth
| ing. When he starts out to make the
rounds in city he leaves the satchel at
a hotel. The razors that he intends
\ trading are fastened in a broad leather
| strap, which he can roll up and place in
! his pocket In the course of five or six
/ hours he will visit half d dozen shops,
and in no case does he leave less than
| dollar to the good. If he We're to put in
| as many hours as a regular barber, he
would probably make thirty or forty
dollars a week, but that same charac-
! teristic which leads him to adopt the
| rowing life makes him disinclined to
work steadily or regularly. AT that he
is never in want, for, if hard pushed, he
| can generally manage to put in day
I as barber, and is generally a good
| one. Then his Wanderings have al
ways been more or less adventurous and
| he has something interesting to talk
about, and as you may have noticed, all
| BARRIERS want to talk. a man of this
sort will manage to work customers for
| tips where the ordinary barber would
be dead lucky to induce him to take
haircut in addition to the shave he in
tended to have.
There used to be one chap who came
in here about once in two or three
months, and was one of the cleverest
men in his line l ever met He carried
even less baggage than the general run
of tourists, his whole outfit consisting
of his sWattystone, a pair of razors,
strop and a few toilet preparations He
would manage to strike here on a Sat
urday and was always in hard luck
He was the Smoothest man in every
sense of the word that ever met. And
he was a good man for the shop, too
for he'd get man in his chair and
work him into believing that he needed
a shampoo, his hair cut and singed and
all the other accessories and the man
that left his chair without having bill
for pretty close to a dollar besides Civ
ing up tip was a wonder. Every time
this fellow struck here we tried to in
duce him to stay, but he wouldn't hear
of any such thing, and would leave
town the next morning.
Just as in every business, this tourist
business has its poor men as well as its
clever people. l remember one man in
particular who might have made all
sorts of money as a barber, but he had
that love for a wandering life that
made it impossible for him to settle
down in any one place and adopted the
tourist life. He simply couldn't talk to
any one. and when he attempted to
make a trade was sure to be beaten
nine times out of ten, but he would
stick to it. AS a result he was always
on the edge of starvation, but at the ex-
pense of his stomach would manage to
keep looking spruce and neatly dressed,
and when his fortunes were at partic-
ularly low stage he would turn his at
teution to barbering. Here he was a
winner. That same inability to carry
on conversation made him priced by
many persons who have a dislike to be-
ing talked at while in the chair, and he
was one of the cleverest hands with a
razor that ever shaved a man. He
would shave four men while l was
shaving one, and / consider myself pref
ty rapid and there wouldn't be a COM
plant from one of them | tried to
show him how much better off he would
be by sticking to shop work, but only
made him the more determined to get
away from it, and the last I heard of
him he was serving a term in Joliet for
highway robbery, committed when he
was rendered desperate by his inability
to make go of the razor trading.
"Thank you, sir. Jim, help the gem
tleman on with his coat. New York
Sun.