“No; they claim that it is pure fact.  My author discourages the slightest admixture of fable.  The truth, clearly and simply expressed, is the best in an ad.

“It is best in a wof, too.  I am always saying that.”

“Wof?”

“Well, work of fiction.  It’s another new word, like lunch or ad.”

“But in a wof,” said my friend, instantly adopting it, “my author insinuates that the fashion of payment tempts you to verbosity, while in an ad the conditions oblige you to the greatest possible succinctness.  In one case you are paid by the word; in the other you pay by the word.  That is where the adsmith stands upon higher moral ground than the wofsmith.”

“I should think your author might have written a recent article in
’The---------, reproaching fiction with its unhallowed gains.”

“If you mean that for a sneer, it is misplaced.  He would have been incapable of it.  My author is no more the friend of honesty in adsmithing than he is of propriety, He deprecates jocosity in apothecaries and undertakers, not only as bad taste, but as bad business; and he is as severe as any one could be upon ads that seize the attention by disgusting or shocking the reader.

“He is to be praised for that, and for the other thing; and I shouldn’t have minded his criticising the ready wofsmith.  I hope he attacks the use of display type, which makes our newspapers look like the poster-plastered fences around vacant lots.  In New York there is only one paper whose advertisements are not typographically a shock to the nerves.”

“Well,” said my friend, “he attacks foolish and ineffective display.”

“It is all foolish and ineffective.  It is like a crowd of people trying to make themselves heard by shouting each at the top of his voice.  A paper full of display advertisements is an image of our whole congested and delirious state of competition; but even in competitive conditions it is unnecessary, and it is futile.  Compare any New York paper but one with the London papers, and you will see what I mean.  Of course I refer to the ad pages; the rest of our exception is as offensive with pictures and scare heads as all the rest.  I wish your author could revise his opinions and condemn all display in ads.”

“I dare say he will when he knows what you think,” said my friend, with imaginable sarcasm.

III.

“I wish,” I went on, “that he would give us some philosophy of the prodigious increase of advertising within the last twenty-five years, and some conjecture as to the end of it all.  Evidently, it can’t keep on increasing at the present rate.  If it does, there will presently be no room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the advertisements of things.”

“Before that time, perhaps,” my friend suggested, “adsmithing will have become so fine and potent an art that advertising will be reduced in bulk, while keeping all its energy and even increasing its effectiveness.”