This . did not happen to me—but it happened to a
friend whose testimony is reliable. " One evening last week I opened the door of my flat in response to a ring, and to my surprise the gentleman waiting ouside greeted me in French. By the time I had summoned up my own French; in anticipation of a strenuous conversation, his face was well inside the door and it was speaking English. It is probably a compliment to the gentleman concerned—since his standards were those of the high-pressure salesman—to describe it as a brass face. He was from a well-known football pools firm. He exhorted me to have a go. Rapidly adjusting himself to the varying forms of my sales-resistance, he assured me, without the smallest consciousness of any inconsistency, that you could, win thousands of pounds for a few shillings and that the process was in no sense gambling ; the last point was clinched to his satisfaction by the assurance that he had several clergymen on his books. Finally, he gave me up for lost, presumably because he had exhausted his repertoire. Is this a more useful job than building houses ? "
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