THERE was a Hotel Clerk in a one-ply town who yearned to become an Ad Man.

He could have yearned to become President of the United States if he had wanted to, but there wasn’t so much money in the president business.

His name was Fred, but they called him Chesterton for short.

During his incarceration as Glad Hander at the McGlook House, Chesterton had lived to see one of the Town Terriers go down to New York and hoof up great clods of turf in the arena of Successful Advertising.

This fired his Ambition, and when later he learned that the reporter on the Squirrelville Banner had just landed a good job as Advertising Manager for a nearby manufactory which had begun to stretch, he just up and heard the voice of Destiny calling him through a railway megaphone.

Thus it was, one Gladsome spring morning, that Chesterton backed away from the little pine hotel-desk for good, and plunged eye-deep into the intricacies of the Advertising Art.

Chesterton’s first clever move was to procure copies of The Banner and analyze all the local Advertisements, but after close scrutiny he concluded that they all leaned heavily to The Rotten.

Which they did.

Which they did beyond the slightest shadow of a little round doubt.

The Liveryman’s Advertisement, for instance, didn’t “Tell The Story,” reflected Chesterton who had already begun to show an easy familiarity with Publicity Terms. And he observed also that the reminder which stood all the year around in the daily 3 in. dbl. col. Display of the Elite Stationary & Supply Store to the effect that Prospective Patrons should do their Christmas shoplifting early, did not appear to be timely copy for July.

Let not the thought here sneak into your mind, Gentile Reader, that our embryonic George Creel confined his observations solely to advertisements committed by local craftsmen. On the contrary he went to the Eureka News Shop and procured copies of all the national magazines and periodicals that carried advertising to enliven the reading matter, and every Ad in them came under the sweep of his cold unemotional eye.

“One common fault I find in all of them,” mused Chesterton. “They all lack The Punch.”

Which criticism should be sufficient to prove to The Reader that Chestie old toppo was now a full-feathered Ad Writer. In the bright lexicon of Publicity there is no word that mouthes so smoothly. When in doubt, talk about The Punch!

To make a long story about seven pages shorter, we will now brush the dandruff off our coat-collar and say that Chesterton accidentally ran across the Three Ball Column of one of the magazines where the Frayed Boys of the Advertising World are accustomed to hanging up their best belongings.

The first one that caught his eye was this:

Following this sizzling specimen of alliterative skill, Chesterton ran across this one:

By this time Chesterton was all het up for he saw where all these Sales Letter Builders were making their big mistake and he felt the feathers of his guardian angel’s wing tickling his spine all the way up.

Intuitively he knew that his footsteps had been guided at last to the big bronze door of Opportunity, and that all he had to do was to knock on her and she would be opened up Unto him. He was politician-sure that he had the password. And the password was PRICE!

And so Chestie sat him down at his little school-desk in the attic, which he had fixed up neatly as his office with a newsprint of St. Elmo as his patron saint, and after three non-union days’ labor he carved out this modest little synopsis of his advertisorial equipment:

Looking the copy over once more, Chesterton decided that there was only one thing the matter with it. The price was too much to the Clothing Sale. So he raised it another $100.00 and then fired the copy off to a couple of good advertising media.

Then he lit up a piece of tampa twine and walked out in the backyard and put chicken-wire around all the trees so the goats would not bark them when the stampede commenced.

One week later the Postman was rolling up Chesterton’s mail in barrels. One year later, all Squirrelville was working in various departments of the Chesterton Advertising Agency.

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