The Last Penny by Edwin Lefevre

TOMMY found, after his dinner with Mr. Thompson, that the responsibility of learning the business by doing his own studying in his own way did not weigh so heavily upon him. There were times, of course, when the slowness of his own progress was not comfortable, but he learned the most valuable of all lessons -- to wit, that you cannot turn raw material into finished product by one operation in one second.

He now divided his time between the general business office in the Tecumseh Building and the office at the works. In the morning he was with the selling force, listening to the dictated replies to all sorts of correspondence or to the explanations and pointers of men who looked after the merchandising of the company's product. But his own interest in the psychology of selling was not personal enough. He couldn't bring himself to feel that in selling for the Tecumseh Company he was pleasing Thomas Francis Leigh quite as much as the company. Of course it would please him to succeed; but he acknowledged to himself that the pleasure would not be because of the selling, but because of the success. He could not project himself into his imaginary auditors, for the wonderful possession of another's ears with which to hear his own voice was not to him what it is to the bom pleader.