Perkins of Portland: Perkins The GreatButler, Ellis Parker
General
Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great
Butler, Ellis Parker
Advertising -- Fiction; Humorous stories
“They will be here in ten minutes!” he cried. “Sit right down and write
to all of our ad. mediums to hold that ad. for a change. In one year we
will buy the soldiers' monument for a paper-weight, and purchase Euclid
Avenue for a bowling-alley! Get off your coat. I've ordered fifty
thousand paper boxes, one hundred thousand labels, and two hundred
thousand plasters. The first lot of boxes will be here to-morrow, and
the first batch of labels to-night. The plasters will be here in five
minutes. It's a wonder I didn't think of it when I wrote the ad. The new
ad. will sell two plasters to every one the old one sold.”
“Where in thunder--” I began.
“At the grocery, of course,” he cried, as if it were the most natural
place to find porous plasters. “I bought every wholesale grocer in town
out of 'em. Cleaned them plump up. I've got enough to fill all orders,
and some over. The finest in the land. Stick closer than a brother,
'feel good, are good,' as I wrote for a stocking concern. Stay on until
they wear off.”
He was right. The trucks soon began to arrive with the cases. They were
piled on the walk twenty high, they were piled in the street, we piled
our office full, and put some in the vacant room across the hall. There
were over a thousand cases of sticky fly-paper.
We cut the sheets into thirds, and sprinkled a little cayenne pepper on
the sticky side with a pepper-shaker, and then punched holes in them.
Later we got a rubber stamp, and printed the directions for use on
each; but we had no time for that then. When the boxes began to arrive,
Perkins ran down and gathered in three newsboys, and constituted them
our packing force. By the end of the week we had our orders all filled.
And our plasters stuck! None ever stuck better. They stuck forever. They
wouldn't peel off, they wouldn't wash off, they wouldn't scrape off.
When one wore off, it left the stickiness there; and the victim had
to buy another to paste on top of the old one before he could put on a
shirt. It was a huge success.
We changed our ad. to read:
“Perkins's Paper Porous Plaster
Makes all pains and aches fly faster,”
and branched out into the magazines. We sent a to Europe, and now
some of the crowned heads are wearing our plasters. You all remember
Stoneley's account of meeting a tribe of natives in the wilds of Africa
wearing nothing but Perkins's Paper Porous Plasters, and recall the
celebrated words of Rodriguez Velos, second understudy to the Premier of
Spain, “America is like Perkins's Paper Porous Plasters--a thing not to
be sat on.”
[Illustration: 30]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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