Rodney. (Amused) Why, I know what they all mean.
Peale. You bet you do. What kind of garters do you wear?
Rodney. Why, let me see: Boston.
Peale. Exactly. What do you know about ’em? Nothing. Are they any better than any other garter? You don’t know—I don’t know—but all my life, every magazine I’ve ever looked into has had a picture of a man’s leg with a certain kind of garter on it—Boston—so when I go into a store to buy a pair of garters I just naturally say Boston; so do you. What do you know about Mennen’s Talcum Powder? Nothing, except that it has the picture of the homeliest man in the world on the box and it’s so impressed your imagination, you just mechanically order Mennen’s. If I say to you, E. & W., you don’t think it’s a corset, do you? If I say C. B., you don’t think it’s a collar, and what about the well-known and justly famous B. V. D.’s? You don’t read advertisement? Rot!
Rodney. But——
Peale. No ‘but’ about it: advertising’s responsible for everything. When a department store advertises a seven-dollar shirt-waist for four dollars, you don’t believe it’s on the level, do you?
Rodney. No, I don’t.
Peale. Neither do I, but there’s a hell of a lot of women who do. When Bryan advertised the Grape Juice Highball, do you know that its sale went up 652 gallons a day?
Rodney. How do you know it was 652?
Peale. I’ll let you into a little secret: I don’t know. I don’t know a damned thing about grape juice, and as long as my health and strength keep up, I hope I never will, but if I said I’d read in a newspaper that the sale had gone up 652 gallons, you wouldn’t have doubted it, would you?