[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
which he knew he would emerge with neither money nor credit; all his recent ventures
had fallen flat, and flattest of all had gone the wonderful new breakfast food, Pipenta, on
the advertisement of which he had sunk such huge sums. It could scarcely be called a
drug in the market; people bought drugs, but no one bought Pipenta.
"Would you marry Leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?" asked the man of
phantom wealth.
"Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation. And to his astonishment
Leonore's father not only gave his consent, but suggested a fairly early date for the
wedding.
"I wish I could show my gratitude in some way," said Mark with genuine emotion. "I'm
afraid it's rather like the mouse proposing to help the lion."
"Get people to buy that beastly muck," said Dullamy, nodding savagely at a poster of the
despised Pipenta, "and you'll have done more than any of my agents have been able to
accomplish."
"It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and something distinctive in the poster
line. Anyway, I'll have a shot at it."
Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food, heralded
under the resounding name of "Filboid Studge." Spayley put forth no pictures of massive
babies springing up with fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of
representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness for
its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell suffering a new
torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held
in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more
gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in
the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Society
hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists
were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical- comedy
stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno, smiling still from force of habit, but
with the fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort. The poster bore no fulsome allusions to
the merits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim statement ran in bold letters along
its base: "They cannot buy it now."
Spayley had grasped, the fact that people will do things from a sense of duty which they
would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands of respectable middle-class men
who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that
a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you went
there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your
motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia
Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders " from somewhere or
another, no one seems to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their
neighbours now and then.
And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have eaten Filboid Studge as a
pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the
grocers' shops to clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig- tailed
daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of its preparation. On
the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was partaken of in silence. Once the
womenfolk discovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their
households knew no bounds. "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be
screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he hurried weariedly from the breakfast-table, and
his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be explained as
"your Filboid Studge that you didn't eat this morning." Those strange fanatics who
ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and
health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest spectacled young then
devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a
future state preached against the poster, and a peer's daughter died from eating too much
of the compound. A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment
mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell
of Blatherstone, who was War Minister at the moment, saved the situation by his happy
epigram, that "Discipline to be effective must be optional."
Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy wisely realized that it was
not necessarily the last word in breakfast dietary; its supremacy would be challenged as
soon as some yet more unpalatable food should be put on the market. There might even [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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which he knew he would emerge with neither money nor credit; all his recent ventures
had fallen flat, and flattest of all had gone the wonderful new breakfast food, Pipenta, on
the advertisement of which he had sunk such huge sums. It could scarcely be called a
drug in the market; people bought drugs, but no one bought Pipenta.
"Would you marry Leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?" asked the man of
phantom wealth.
"Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation. And to his astonishment
Leonore's father not only gave his consent, but suggested a fairly early date for the
wedding.
"I wish I could show my gratitude in some way," said Mark with genuine emotion. "I'm
afraid it's rather like the mouse proposing to help the lion."
"Get people to buy that beastly muck," said Dullamy, nodding savagely at a poster of the
despised Pipenta, "and you'll have done more than any of my agents have been able to
accomplish."
"It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and something distinctive in the poster
line. Anyway, I'll have a shot at it."
Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food, heralded
under the resounding name of "Filboid Studge." Spayley put forth no pictures of massive
babies springing up with fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of
representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness for
its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell suffering a new
torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held
in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more
gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in
the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Society
hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists
were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical- comedy
stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno, smiling still from force of habit, but
with the fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort. The poster bore no fulsome allusions to
the merits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim statement ran in bold letters along
its base: "They cannot buy it now."
Spayley had grasped, the fact that people will do things from a sense of duty which they
would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands of respectable middle-class men
who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that
a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you went
there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your
motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia
Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders " from somewhere or
another, no one seems to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their
neighbours now and then.
And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have eaten Filboid Studge as a
pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the
grocers' shops to clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig- tailed
daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of its preparation. On
the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was partaken of in silence. Once the
womenfolk discovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their
households knew no bounds. "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be
screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he hurried weariedly from the breakfast-table, and
his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be explained as
"your Filboid Studge that you didn't eat this morning." Those strange fanatics who
ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and
health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest spectacled young then
devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a
future state preached against the poster, and a peer's daughter died from eating too much
of the compound. A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment
mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell
of Blatherstone, who was War Minister at the moment, saved the situation by his happy
epigram, that "Discipline to be effective must be optional."
Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy wisely realized that it was
not necessarily the last word in breakfast dietary; its supremacy would be challenged as
soon as some yet more unpalatable food should be put on the market. There might even [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]