“It's glorious!” I exclaimed.
VI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE POET
ABOUT the time Perkins and I were booming our justly famous Codliver Capsules,—you know them, of course, “sales, ten million boxes a year,”—I met Kate. She was sweet and pink as the Codliver Capsules. You recall the verse that went:—
“'Pretty Polly, do you think,
Blue is prettier, or pink?'
'Pink, sir,' Polly said, 'by far;
Thus Codliver Capsules are.'”
You see, we put them up in pink capsules.
“The pink capsules for the pale corpuscles.”
Perkins invented the phrase. It was worth forty thousand dollars to us. Wonderful man, Perkins!
But, as I remarked, Kate was as sweet and pink as Codliver Capsules; but she was harder to take. So hard, in fact, that I couldn't seem to take her; and the one thing I wanted most was to take her—away from her home and install her in one of my own. I seemed destined to come in second in a race where there were only two starters, and in love-affairs you might as well be distanced as second place. The fellow who had the preferred location next pure reading-matter in Kate's heart was a poet.