“There,” he cried triumphantly, “I knew it. You would be lost. You would therefore come to me. I should charge you ten guineas, but in return you would have a name that would make your fortune.”
“What would that be?” I ventured to ask.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, “for certain. ‘Sheep-O,’ perhaps. But anyway it would be a good name. ‘Flock-vim,’ perhaps. Or even ‘Mut-force.’”
I began to long for my train.
“How do you think of such things?” I inquired. “Tell me your processes.”
He laughed deprecatingly. “I have given the subject an immense deal of thought,” he said. “For many years now I have done little else; I am always on the look-out for ideas. They come to me at all kinds of odd times and in all kinds of odd places. In bed—on a ’bus—in the train.”
“This one?” I asked.
“‘Phast-phix’?” he replied. “Oh, I thought of that instantaneously. You see, the firm came to my office to say they were putting a new gum or cement on the market, and they must have a good name for it at once. I had no time. I buried my head in my hands, for a few seconds (my regular habit) and suddenly ‘Phast-phix’ flashed into it. They were enchanted.”
“I notice,” I said, “a tendency among advertisers to transform ‘f’ into ‘ph.’”
“Yes,” he said, “they got it from me. I was the first. It is far more striking, don’t you think? To spell ‘fast-fix’ correctly wouldn’t be witty at all.”