Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great

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He is infallible. But in those days, when his star was but rising above the horizon, he was not, as he is now, considered the master and leader of us all – the king of the advertising world – mighty giant of advertising genius among the dwarfs of imitation. So Silas Boggs refused his advice.

The next month the advertisement of the Silas Boggs Lop-eared Guinea-pigs began to appear in the weekly newspapers of the West. The advertisement, although small, was well worded, for Perkins wrote it himself. It was a gem of advertising writing. It began with a small cut of a guinea-pig, which, unfortunately, appeared as a black blot in many of the papers; but this, perhaps, lent an air of mystery to the cut that it would not otherwise have had. The text was as follows:

“The Celebrated Lop-eared Andalusian Guinea-pigs! Hardy and prolific! One of nature’s wonders! Makes a gentle and affectionate pet. For young or old. YOU CAN MAKE MONEY by raising and selling Lop-eared Andalusian Guinea-pigs. One pair starts you in business. Send money-order for $10 to Silas Boggs, 5986 Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago, HI., and receive a healthy pair, neatly boxed, by express.”

To Silas Boggs the West had theretofore been a vague, colorless expanse somewhere beyond the West Side of Chicago. Three days after his advertisements began to appear, he awoke to the fact that the West is a vast and mighty empire, teeming with millions of souls. And to Silas Boggs it seemed that those souls had been sleeping for ages, only to be called to life by the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pig. The lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pig was the one touch that made the whole West kin. Mail came to him by tubfuls and basketfuls. People who despised and reviled the common guinea-pig were impatient and restless because they had lived so long without the sweet companionship of the lop-eared Andalusian. From Tipton, Ia., and Vida, Kan., and Chenawee, Dak., and Orangebloom, Cal., came eager demands for the hardy and prolific lop-ear. Ministers of the gospel and babes in arms insisted on having the gentle and affectionate Andalusian lop-eared guinea-pigs.

The whole West arose in its might, and sent money-orders to Silas Boggs. And Silas Boggs opened the letters as fast as he could, and smiled. He piled the blue money-orders up in stacks beside him, and smiled. Silas Boggs was one large, happy smile for one large, happy week. Then he frowned a little.

For all was not well with the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pigs. They were not as hardy as he had guaranteed them to be. They seemed to have the pip, or glanders, or boll-weevil, or something unpleasant. The Duke was not only lop-eared, but seemed to feel loppy all over. The Duchess, in keeping with her name, evinced a desire to avoid common society, and sulked in one corner of her cage. They were a pair of very effete aristocrats. Silas Boggs gave them catnip tea and bran mash, or other sterling remedies; but the far-famed lop-eared Andalusians pined away. And, as Silas Boggs sat disconsolately by their side, he could hear the mail-men relentlessly dumping more and more letters on the parlor floor.

The West was just beginning to realize the desirability of having lop-eared guinea-pigs at the moment when lop-eared guinea-pigs were on the point of becoming as extinct as the dodo and mastodon. In a day or two they became totally extinct, and the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pig existed no more. Silas Boggs wept.

But his tears did not wash away the constantly increasing heaps of orders. He ordered Perkins to withdraw his advertisement, but still the orders continued to come, and Silas Boggs, assisted by a corps of young, but industrious, ladies, began returning to the eager West the beautiful blue money-orders; and, if anything sends a pang through a man’s breast, it is to be obliged to return a money-order uncashed.

By the end of the month the incoming orders had dwindled to a few thousand daily – about as many as Silas Boggs and his assistants could return. By the end of the next month they had begun to make noticeable inroads in the accumulated piles of orders; and in two months more the floor was clear, and the arriving orders had fallen to a mere dribble of ten or twelve a day, but the hair of Silas Boggs had turned gray, and his face was old and wan.

Silas Boggs gave away all his guinea-pigs – the sight of them brought on something like a fit. He could not even bear to see a lettuce leaf or cabbage-head. He will walk three blocks to avoid passing an animal store, for fear he might see a guinea-pig in the window. Only a few days ago I was praising a certain man to him, and happened to quote the line from Burns, —

“Rank is but the guinea’s stamp,”

but when I came to the word “guinea,” I saw Silas Boggs turn pale, and put his hand to his forehead.

But he cannot escape the results of his injudicious advertising, even at this day, so many years after. From time to time some one in the West will unpack a trunk that has stood for years in some garret, and espying a faded newspaper laid in the bottom of the trunk, will glance at it curiously, see the advertisement of the lop-eared Andalusian guinea-pigs, and send Silas Boggs ten dollars.

For an advertisement, like sin, does not end with the day, but goes on and on, down the mighty corridors of time, and, like the hall-boy in a hotel, awakes the sleeping, and calls them to catch a train that, sometimes, has long since gone, just as the lop-eared Andalusians have gone.

III. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LAME AND THE HALT

I HAD not seen Perkins for over two years, when one day he opened my office door, and stuck his head in. I did not see his face at first, but I recognized the hat. It was the same hat he had worn two years before, when he put the celebrated Perkins’s Patent Porous Plaster on the market.

“Pratt’s Hats Air the Hair.” You will remember the advertisement. It was on all the bill-boards. It was Perkins, Perkins of Portland, Perkins the Great, who conceived the rhyme that sold millions of the hats; and Perkins was a believer in advertising and things advertised. So he wore a Pratt hat. That was one of Perkins’s foibles. He believed in the things he advertised.

“Get next to a thing,” he would say. “Study it, learn to love it, use it – then you will know how to boom it. Take Murdock’s Soap. Perkins of Portland boomed it. He bought a cake. Used it. Used it on his hands, on his face, on his feet. Bought another cake – washed his cotton socks, washed his silk tie, washed his woollen underwear. Bought another cake – shaved with it, shampooed with it, ate it. Yes, sir, ate it! Pure soap – no adulteration. No taste of rosin, cottonseed – no taste of anything but soap, and lots of that. Spit out lather for a month! Every time I sneezed I blew a big soap-bubble – perspired little soap-bubbles. Tasted soap for a year! Result? Greatest ad. of the nineteenth century. ‘Murdock’s Soap is pure soap. If you don’t believe it, bite it.’ Picture of a nigger biting a cake of soap on every billboard in U. S. A. Live niggers in all the grocery windows biting cakes of Murdock’s Soap. Result? Five hundred thousand tons of Murdock’s sold the first year. I use no other.” And so, from his “Go-lightly” shoes to his Pratt’s hat, Perkins was a relic of bygone favorites in dress. The result was comical, but it was Perkins; and I sprang from my chair and grasped his hand.

“Perkins!” I cried.

He raised his free hand with a restraining motion, and I noticed his fingers protruded from the tips of the glove.

“Say,” he said, still standing on my threshold, “have you a little time?”

I glanced at my watch. I had twenty minutes before I must catch my train.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” I said.

“Not enough,” said Perkins. “I want a year. But I’ll take ten minutes on account. Owe me the rest!”

He turned and beckoned into the hall, and a small boy appeared carrying a very large glass demijohn. Perkins placed the demijohn on a chair, and stood back gazing at it admiringly.

“Great, isn’t it?” he asked. “Biggest demijohn made. Heavy as lead! Fine shape, fine size! But, say – read that!”

I bent down and read. The label said: “Onotowatishika Water. Bottled at the spring. Perkins & Co., Glaubus, Ia.”

I began spelling out the name by syllables, “O – no – to – wat – ” when Perkins clapped me on the back.

“Great, hey? Can’t pronounce it? Nobody can. Great idea. Got old Hunyadi Janos water knocked into a cocked hat. Hardest mineral water name on earth. Who invented it? I did. Perkins of Portland. There’s money in that name. Dead loads of money. Everybody that can’t pronounce it will want it, and nobody can pronounce it – everybody’ll want it. Must have it. Will weep for it. But that isn’t the best!”

“No?” I inquired.

“No!” shouted Perkins. “I should say ‘no!’ Look at that bottle. Look at the size of it. Look at the weight of it Awful, isn’t it? Staggers the brain of man to think of carrying that across the continent! Nature recoils, the muscles ache. It is vast, it is immovable, it is mighty. Say!”

Perkins grasped me by the coat-sleeve, and drew me toward him. He whispered excitedly.

“Great idea! O-no-to-what-you-may-call-it water. Big jug full. Jug too blamed big. Yes? Freight too much. Yes? Listen – ‘Perkins Pays the Freight!’”

He sat down suddenly, and beamed upon me joyfully.

The advertising possibilities of the thing impressed me immediately. Who could resist the temptation of getting such a monstrous package of glassware by freight free of charge? I saw the effect of a life-size reproduction of the bottle on the bill-boards with “Perkins Pays the Freight” beneath it in red, and the long name in a semicircle of yellow letters above it. I saw it reduced in the magazine pages, in street-cars – everywhere.

“Great?” queried Perkins.

“Yes,” I admitted thoughtfully, “it is great.”

He was at my side in an instant.

“Wonderful effect of difficulty overcome on the human mind!” he bubbled. “Take a precipice. People look over, shudder, turn away. Put in a shoot-the-chutes. People fight to get the next turn to slide down. Same idea. People don’t want O-no-to-thing-um-bob water. Hold on, ‘Perkins pays the freight!’ All right, send us a demijohn!”