The sign in front of the dingy little office on a side-street, through which I was walking, read:
JO COSE AND JOCK EWLAH
FUNSMITHS
Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, I went in. A little dried-up man, who introduced himself as Mr. Cose, greeted me cheerily. He said that Mr. Ewlah was out at lunch, but he’d be pleased to do what he could for me.
“What is the nature of your calling?” asked I.
“It is you who are calling,” said he, averting his eyes. Then he assumed the voice and manner of a “lecturer” in a dime museum, and rattled along as follows:
“We are in the joke business. Original and second-hand jokes bought and sold. Old jokes made over as good as new. Good old stand-bys altered to suit the times. Jokes cleaned and made ready for the press. We do not press them ourselves. Joke expanders for sale cheap. Also patent padders for stories—”
I interrupted the flow of his talk to ask him if there was much demand for the padders.
“Young man,” said he, “do you keep up with current literature?”
Then he went over to a shelf on which stood a long line of bottles of the size of cod-liver-oil bottles, and taking one down, he said: “Now, here is Jokoleine, of which we are the sole agents. This will make a poor joke salable, and is in pretty general use in the city, although some editors will not buy a joke that smells of it.”