Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my goods
CHAPTER IV THE road was a great school of business and life to
me. I visited scores of cities. I met hundreds of human types. I saw
much of the United States.
Every time I returned home I felt as though, in comparison with
the places which I had just visited, New York was not an
American city at all, and as though my last trip had greatly added
to the "real American" quality in me
Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in the world. I
could not go to bed in a Pullman car, walk over the springy
"runner" of a hotel corridor, unfold the immense napkin of a hotel
dining-room, or shake down my trousers upon alighting from a
boot-black's chair, without being conscious of the difference
between my present life and my life in Antomir
I was full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but there was
usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. While on the road I
would feel homesick for New York, and at the same time I would
feel that I had no home anywhere, that my mother was dead and I
was all alone in the world.
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