Back in the early years of the present century the advertising industry cooked up an art form that had a quaint and brief life.

Which is to say that the industry used to get out pamphlets using fictional situations to draw attention to the merits of the product that was being advertised. These were aimed straight at the ten-year-old mind, and inasmuch as I was just ten when I first met them I became a devoted reader.

I remember one gripping little story produced by some company that sold baking powder. It showed various scenes in the life of a Mr. Brown. He was grumpy, moody, verging on failure in business, and there were pictures showing him sitting at his desk staring at nothing; obviously a man who was rapidly going down the drain. And it developed, before too long, that his loving wife was entirely responsible. She was using the wrong kind of baking powder; her biscuits were leaden or soggy, her pancakes were even worse, her cake was all but inedible, and with the best wishes in the world she was slowly poisoning her good husband.

Fortunately, before it was too late, someone introduced her to Our Sponsor’s baking powder. (It either had cream of tartar, or it did not. I cannot remember which, but whichever it was, that was the key.) This made all the difference. Mr. Brown perked up no end, became happy and cheerful, kind to his family, and a jewel in the eyes of his boss. I was totally converted, and begged my mother before it was too late to switch to the right kind of baking powder. It turned out that she was dedicated to the other kind and she refused to change, pointing out that people who ate her bread, biscuits, pancakes, and so on were well and happy. So much for that. …

The best story of all came in a pamphlet advertising an automobile. This, I remember, was in the early days when the auto industry was no older than I was, and not much clearer in its mind about where it was going; and the auto promoted by this fable was of a hopelessly obsolete type that I can only call a motorized buggy. It looked exactly like a high-wheeled, hard-rubber-tired buggy except that it had no horse. The one-lunged motor was under the seat, the driver steered with a tiller, and even in those innocent days the type clearly was on its way out. But the advertising man had devised a most fascinating story.

The hero was a young man with his way to make; the heroine was the daughter of the local magnate, who refused to approve this romance because he wanted his daughter to marry a man who had made a lot of money. Foiled, the young couple planned to elope. Late one night, the hero drove his car—and the essential point is that his car was one of