“Henry Ford,” the old man questioned further, acting as though he was preaching a sermon, “or Gallywiggle?”
Amused, I wondered who Gallywiggle was. I had heard of Mr. Edison and Mr. Ford, but I never had heard of a Mr. Gallywiggle. Gallywiggle! Wasn’t that a name for you?
“Mr. Gallywiggle,” the old man went on, sort of warming up, “Mr. Mortimor Hackadorne Gallywiggle, the president of our company an’ the friend of all humanity. The genius who has taken more warts from women’s noses than all of the talkin’ machines an’ all of the automobiles put together. The man who has made millions of sallow skins pink. The man who has turned bushels of blemishes into barrels of blushes. The man, folks, who spent fifty years of his noble, useful life perfectin’ the formula of the greatest gift that science has ever bestowed upon womankind. Bubbles of Beauty! The only toilet soap of its kind in the world. An’ to-night, ladies and gents, to introduce this marvelous beautifier into your homes—for one evening, folks, as a special introductory offer—we are cuttin’ the price of this household necessity down to only a dime, ten cents, a cake.” [[47]]
Suddenly his voice trailed away. And he looked sort of embarrassed-like. I guess he had forgotten himself. I figured it out that he was a soap peddler and was used to talking this way to street-corner crowds.
“Boys,” he said, holding our eyes with his own, “if you’ll work fur me I’ll make you assistant beautifiers. I need you in my business. For this thing of makin’ women beautiful is a big job. To do it thorough, like our dear departed president, Mr. Gallywiggle, asked me to do, personal, when he signed my territorial contract, I’ve got to have plenty of capable help. Mebby you kin guess how turrible I’d feel to learn that I had passed up some poor, unfortunate woman who wanted to be beautiful an’ who was left homely simply because I was so rushed that I didn’t git around to her with a cake of our marvelous Bubbles of Beauty.”
There was a worn black leather satchel in the buggy. He opened this satchel and took out several small cardboard boxes. Removing the cover of one of the pink boxes, he let us see that it contained three thin cakes of soap. It was swell soap all right. I could tell by the smell.
“As I started to say,” the soap man continued, “my name is Ajax Posselwait. I’m on a’ advertisin’ [[48]]tour through this section of the country gittin’ folks acquainted with our marvelous Bubbles of Beauty, the wonder soap that makes all women beautiful. To introduce the soap into every home we are offerin’ three cakes for a quartex. In the cities, where thousands of women, yes, millions of women, are usin’ Bubbles of Beauty to keep beautiful with, the reg’lar price is fifty cents. But it’s all a part of our sellin’ plan to put up with a loss in gittin’ established in a new territory. We just charge up the loss to advertisin’.”
He cleared his throat.
“Now, it ain’t goin’ to be no trick at all fur you boys, as assistant beautifiers, to sell a box of our marvelous Bubbles of Beauty into every home in this community. All you’ve got to do is to tell the women how the soap improves the complexion, drives away blotches, transforms wrinkles into dimples. An’ fur every quarter that you take in you keep ten cents, which is your pay, an’ I git fifteen cents.”
I looked at our leader. He had suggested catching frogs as a possible way of earning money. And on the moment it seemed to me that selling this man’s soap was a better money-making scheme than frog-catching. He couldn’t gyp us, [[49]]like the fake detective did, because we wouldn’t be putting up any money. We were safe.