It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a specialty of learning
how the English washed fine woollen golf-stockings without shrinking them, and
within a year he was catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were
insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his laundry just as they had
insisted on a caddy who could find golf balls. A little later he was doing their wives'
lingerie as well--and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before he was
twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries in his section of the country. It
was then that he sold out and went to New York. But the part of his story that
concerns us goes back to the days when he was making his first big success.