‘Young women,’ said Mr. Hollywell. ‘I found it out quite by accident. I
got a lot of complaints from one particular town that our cigarettes had
no photos with them. I discovered after a while that a girl in one
of the principal shops had hit on a dodge for getting out the photos
without apparently injuring the packets. The funny thing was that
she never touched the ironclads or the “Types of the soldiers of all
nations,” which you might have thought would interest her, but she
collared every single actress, and had duplicates of most of them. And
she wasn’t an exception. Most girls goad their young men to buy these
cigarettes and make collections of the photos. Queer, isn’t it? I can’t
imagine why they do it.’
‘You said just now,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that latterly you hadn’t done quite
so well. Did you run out of actresses and battleships?’
‘No; but one of the Irish firms took to offering prizes and enclosing
coupons. You collected twenty coupons, and you got a silver-backed
looking-glass--girls again, you see--or two thousand coupons, and you
got a new bicycle. It’s an old dodge, of course, but somehow it always
seems to pay. However, all this doesn’t matter to you. All I wanted was
to show you that there is no use relying on patriotism. The thing to go
in for in any business is attractive novelties, cheap lines, and, in the
country shops, long credit.’
It was not very long before Hyacinth began to realize the soundness of
Mr. Hollywell’s contempt for patriotism. In the town of Clogher he
found the walls placarded with the advertisements of an ultra-patriotic
draper. ‘Féach Annseo,’ he read, ‘The Irish House. Support Home
Manufactures.’ Another placard was even more vehement in its appeal.
‘Why curse England,’ it asked, ‘and support her manufacturers?’ Try
O’Reilly, the one-price man.’ The sentiments were so admirable that
Hyacinth followed the advice and tried O’Reilly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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