"What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry.... That's where we get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory like this. Think!... One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very possibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round 'em and sell 'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I'll admit, him and his dams, but after all there's a sort of protection about 'em, a kind of muddy practicality! They prevent things getting at him. And it's not your poetry only. It's the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to poet--soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty--in a bottle--the magic philtre! Like a fairy tale....
"Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I'm calling it footle, Ponderevo, out of praise," he said in parenthesis.)
"Think of the little clerks and jaded women and overworked people. People overstrained with wanting to do, people overstrained with wanting to be.... People, in fact, overstrained.... The real trouble of life, Ponderevo, isn't that we exist--that's a vulgar error; the real trouble is that we DON'T really exist and we want to. That's what this--in the highest sense--just stands for! The hunger to be--for once--really alive--to the finger tips!...
"Nobody wants to do and be the things people are--nobody. YOU don't want to preside over this--this bottling; I don't want to wear these beastly clothes and be led about by you; nobody wants to keep on sticking labels on silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn't existing! That's--sus--substratum. None of us want to be what we are, or to do what we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? You know. I know. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is something perpetually young and beautiful--young Joves--young Joves, Ponderevo" --his voice became loud, harsh and declamatory--"pursuing coy half-willing nymphs through everlasting forests."...
There was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us.
"Come downstairs," I interrupted, "we can talk better there."
"I can talk better here," he answered.
He was just going on, but fortunately the implacable face of Mrs.
Hampton Diggs appeared down the aisle of bottling machines.
"All right," he said, "I'll come."
In the little sanctum below, my uncle was taking a digestive pause after his lunch and by no means alert. His presence sent Ewart back to the theme of modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him. He behaved with the elaborate deference due to a business magnate from an unknown man.
"What I was pointing out to your nephew, sir," said Ewart, putting both elbows on the table, "was the poetry of commerce.
He doesn't, you know, seem to see it at all."
My uncle nodded brightly. "Whad I tell 'im," he said round his cigar.
"We are artists. You and I, sir, can talk, if you will permit me, as one artist to another. It's advertisement has--done it.
Advertisement has revolutionised trade and industry; it is going to revolutionise the world. The old merchant used to tote about commodities; the new one creates values. Doesn't need to tote.
He takes something that isn't worth anything--or something that isn't particularly worth anything--and he makes it worth something. He takes mustard that is just like anybody else's mustard, and he goes about saying, shouting, singing, chalking on walls, writing inside people's books, putting it everywhere, 'Smith's Mustard is the Best.' And behold it is the best!"
"True," said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of mysticism; "true!"
