Words That Sing to Your Pocketbook

THE CONTRIBUTOR’S CLUB

I MAKE my living with words — none of your literary gentlemen turning out odes to Olympus, problem-plays, magazines stories where the innocent heroine commits indiscretions indiscreet enough to titillate the most fastidiously exclusive readers — nothing so fine as that! I make my living weaving words into a song to serenade your pocketbook.

There are hundreds of us golden troubadours, and our music comes to you from every side. ‘Dawn-glow Silks have hues like the twilight’; ‘Buy an Hour-glass Clock and your time will be as faithful as the Tides of the Ocean'; ‘Breakfast without Wine-rich Coffee is a disappointment’; ‘Sunlight — the soap that could wash away the sins of the world.’

You sit there after supper reading your newspaper or the latest issue of your magazine. You are interested in the ridiculous new schemes of ‘the best mayor our town ever had,’ ‘the railroad strikers’ demands,’ or ‘the last revolution in Russia.’ It makes no difference to you that Golden Glow Tea is waiting on the shelves of the nearest grocer to be bought. But something has happened! A few weeks ago Mr. Bouncing, owner of the Golden Glow Tea Company, decided that it should make a difference. He has determined that you are to prefer it to every other drink; and so he hires me — yes, sometimes a little of the money that he pays finds its way down to me — to tell you how delicious, how fragrant, how utterly irresistible is Golden Glow Tea.

What is tea, anyway — ugly, shriveled, dried leaves which color hot water a yellowish brown, which make it taste unpleasant and keep you awake, unless you are used to drinking them! You don’t sell a man an auger, you sell him the hole. My problem is not to sell you tea. That would be difficult, indeed. I’ve got to sell you that, magic spell which is brewed nowhere else but in a teapot; I’ve got to make you think of that spell as a part of Golden Glow Tea.

So I sit at my desk trying to recall all the delightful associations I ever had with tea. I draw in my breath and bring back to my nostrils ghostly odors of the fragrance of bygone tea-parties. There’s a certain cosy fire, a green teaset, and the snow falling heavily outside; a cold tramp, that ended with red cheeks — and a steaming cup of tea. There steals the memory of a woman sitting in a tall chair like a duchess, behind the richness of the silver pot and shining cups. Oh, there are a thousand such memories! Breakfasts, splendid sunset times, and midnight madnesses. Tea — the very thought of it begins to drug me with its enchantments, with its fragrance. Haunting pictures of Japanese hillsides, and sunshine, and blue skies are winnowed back and forth by soft winds.

And so I grip my pencil and begin to Aveave the echoes of my memories into a song of tea. By and by, if I’m lucky and have sAveated hard enough, I have written a piece of copy that reflects the witchery of my memories, that sings out to you to stop reading about the President, and stocks, and German perfidy, and take a moment to hear how tempting Golden Glow Tea is, to realize what you are missing until you have some yourself.

Or it may not be tea that Mr. Bouncing sells. It may be just something like a steel monkey-wrench. Then my mind feels the thunder of the mighty hammers, pulses with the roar of industry, and sees the ‘Niagaras of hot sparks’ leaping from the burning steel. I spend three days talking with smudged-faced mechanics about round-shouldered nuts, brittle edges, and barked knuckles; and instead of a delicate legend of tea, a chorus of endurance, strength, accuracy, tough steel, and service rings out from the page. I can’t choose my subject, you know — and I ’ve got to make my song echo all the way doAvn to your pocketbook, or it’s no good.

I don’t, waste my time getting a preponderous mass of reasons, making lucid arguments flawless. Not if I am wise. There may be a hundred reasons, but a beautiful syllogism never pushes your hand into your pocket. I 've got. to break down that solid wall of inertia which surrounds us all, so I grasp a far more potent weapon than pure logic. When I write my song, I strive to use a power that has moved the world since its beginning — the language of the poets.

Someone has said that writers of advertisements are the poets who have failed. Perhaps, from the advertisements you have read, you are inclined to think them the poets who never were. A real poet once said to me that they were the poets who had succeeded. However, be that as it may, young as the advertising profession is, the experts at it have learned the power that lies in poetry to make us act, and it is toward poetry that the advertising of the future and the best advertising of to-day is tending.

Of course, at first you will disagree with me. You will quote advertisements which are mere execrable blots on human consciousness. You will feel offended that poetry should be linked up to turn the Wheels of Trade. Gentle reader, there is a power in poetry; and cunning Trade — like a seductive mistress — uses whatever she may to further her ends. Has she not gone into the hidden depths of the mountain? Has she not shackled the lightning, and wrested homage from the very breath of the winds? Do you think she will ignore the flame that burns in the human heart?

Somehow in poetry, as nowhere else, there flows along, side by side with words skillfully used, a current that carries us beyond the intrinsic value of the sense. Where there is poetry, we don’t need elaborate reasons. A little poem can say more than volumes. A little poem can wind itself about our hearts. Shelley says, ‘The poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.' To move a people to morality were indeed a great task; but if poetry can do that, how much simpler to use it to persuade a man that for a dollar he can have hours of pleasure and thrills with Mr. Swashbuckle’s latest novel, that he can sleep until the last minute and always be sure of waking up with a FUGIT alarm-clock!

Amy Lowell has said that words are sword-blades and poppy-seeds. You can cut, or you can drug with them. Personally, I have a pleasant habit, of falling in love with words. Not long ago, for a whole morning I was thrilled with t he sonorous tragedy of the word 'plangent.' I remember a child once who was completely fascinated by ‘murmuring.’ She went around the house repeating it over and over. A Broadway producer told me that the reason Granville Barker dressed the fairies in his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in gold and gilded them, was because ‘golden’ is the most beautiful word in the English language. Think of the joy of reading Keats -— the words he uses, somehow, seem to sparkle and glisten like jewels in moonlight, half shedding the very hues of the rainbow. And long after we have laid him down, long after we have let the sense slip away, the glowing still remains.

And there, gentle reader, you have the secret of the most intelligent advertising. It glows in your memory long after you have forgotten the sense, long after you have forgotten that you ever read an advertisement. If it was touched with poetic fire, somewhere in your memory glows a phrase, a word — or perhaps the mere atmosphere of some emotion that comes float ing back at the recollection of a name. So you instinctively associate the idea of elegance and luxury with this automobile; the idea of purity with that soap. An automobile is no longer a collection of steel and rubber that moves enveloped in a cloud of unpleasant smells. Soap is not just a pungent mixture of oils. Your imagination has touched them. They become like a country lane glorified by sunset, or a bit of water that mirrors the sky, or a necklace that once adorned the throat of Francesca Da Rimini. A spell has settled over them.

By this time you are thinking, ‘All that you say is very good in theory, but for the life of me I can’t think of a single case.’

Very well, gentle reader, here is the first one that comes into my mind: —

A SKIN YOU LOVE TO TOUCH

What a monument of argument! What a poetic figure! Could anything be more delicately alluring! The phrase sings itself into your memory. It even scans.

Here is a passage from an advertisement which has run in dozens of current magazines. Where in all literature will you find more magnificent cadence or a greater atmosphere of loftiness?

HE WALKED WITH KINGS

He could not know, standing there in his bare feet and his rough clothes, with his little schooling, that kings would do h im honor when he died, and that all men who read would mourn a friend.

He could not dream that one day his work would stand in Chinese, in Russian, in Hebrew, in Hungarian, in Polish, in French, in many languages he could not read — and from humble doorman to proudest emperor, all would be gladdened at his coming.

He could not know that through it all he would remain as simple, as democratic, as he was that day as a boy on the Mississippi.

These are but two. There are hundreds of examples calling to you from every side.

As for the crass, dull advertisements — of course, they predominate. Probably they always will! It may console your æsthetic sense to know that, as a rule, they are not so profitable as the others.

I am not defending the use of poetry in advertising. I am not extolling advertising. The short of it is, good advertising makes the public buy, and most good advertising has a touch of poetry. Many a starving Chatterton to-day is making a comfortable living. Artists are no longer penniless, but grow opulent decorating the advertising pages of magazines. While this is not artistically ideal, it is humanly more comfortable for men of doubtful muses.

But that is a personal matter. All about us Trade has usurped the cloak of Euterpe. ’T is a strange and potent camouflage, and one which those who love the muse and her eight sisters must find a striking aspect of the age, and interesting enough to be observed. And as for observing it, surely that is easy, for impudent Trade has slipped right in between the pages of this book — nay, whether you will or not, she has crept into your Holy of Holies. Who, then, may deny her entrance?