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An Ordinary ManSome of them were tedious, but others were quite beautiful. My favorite was a mournful song called БЂњThe Salesman of VaudБЂ«about a glamorous Swiss lady who wanted to buy some jewelry from a tattered old peddler, but all he had to give her was a copy of the Bible. She read it and her soul was saved. I had seen very few European ladies at the time, but those words seemed so sweet and wistful as we all sang them together inside the squat hilltop church: Oh! Look at, my beautiful and noble lady, These gold chains, these invaluable jewels. You see these pearls of which the flame A flash of your eyes would erase? Though I seemed headed for a life of Christian modesty, there was always a streak of the entrepreneur in me. Even as a ten-year-old I was gathering up peanuts and reselling them for a profit. Hard work appealed to me. Where other teenage boys liked soccer and girls, my hobby was painting houses for people in the village. This was where I first learned the art of negotiation. I would start my price far above what I expected to receive and coyly ratchet it down according to what I saw in the face of the man who wanted his house painted ...» |
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