Six months ago Maurice Gillstone's flat was the home of unrest.
Maurice was one of those authors who tire of their creations before
completion. He would get an idea, begin to write and then turn to some
other theme.
It made the domestic atmosphere difficult. You would go to call on the
Gillstones and find them plunged in despair. Maurice would gaze at you
with a wild unseeing eye, pass his hand through his dishevelled hair,
mutter "The inspiration has left me," and fling himself into a chair
and groan. Mrs. Maurice would burst into tears.
The flat was strewn with fragments of manuscripts. Plays, novels,
poems (none finished) littered the rooms in profusion; a brilliant
but isolated Scene I., stray opening chapters of novels, detached
prologues of mighty epics.
"His beginnings are wonderful," Mrs. Maurice would wail between her
sobs; "keen critics and men of the most delicate literary taste rave
over them; but if he can't finish them, what's the use?"
It was very sad.
Then John Edmund Drall, the inventor of the non-alcoholic beverage
which is now a household word and an old friend of the Gillstones,
came along and tried to cure Maurice of his literary defect by the
sort of ruse one would employ on a jibbing horse. He sent Maurice a
bottle of his Lemonbeer and asked him to write an appreciation of that
noxious fluid.
"I have asked Maurice," Drall confided to me, "to scribble a
testimonial to Lemonbeer. It will kind of break the spell, and it
wouldn't be Maurice if he didn't turn out a perfect gem of literary
composition. I know my Lemonbeer is really good and I know that
Maurice is extremely appreciative. Maurice is under a spell. It must
be broken. If he can write a complete testimonial he will easily
finish all those beginnings of his." The idea seemed sound.
Well, Maurice drank the Lemonbeer and, in spite of an increasing
tendency to swoon, did begin to write a gem of a testimonial. He had,
however, written but the first four words of it when he fainted. These
words were "Lemonbeer is the best...."
Maurice would do anything for a friend, and, as I say, had actually
written "Lemonbeer is the best ..." after drinking a whole bottle of
it.
It was Drall's advertisement manager who said that in point of selling
power this testimonial was unsurpassed. "The finished completeness of
the composition," he said, "shows sheer genius. Just four words. A
word added or subtracted would ruin it."
When Maurice came to and learnt how brilliant he had been he simply
put on his hat and walked round to a Film Agency to say that he was
prepared to write--and complete--any number of masterpieces. Since
that day he has never looked back.
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=Commercial Candour.=
"ANTIQUE SILVER.
Mr. ---- invites all interested to inspect his fine stock which he
can offer just new at exceptionally low prices."--_Daily Paper._
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[Illustration: _Peggy._ "PLEASE, MISS JUDKIN, MUMMY SAYS WILL YOU
KINDLY LET HER HAVE A LITTLE BRANDY FOR OUR GOAT? IT'S VERY ILL AND
MUMMY IS AFRAID IT'S DYING."
_Miss Judkin._ "TELL YOUR MOTHER I'M VERY SORRY, BUT THE ONLY BRANDY
I'VE GOT IS VERY OLD."
_Peggy._ "OH, THAT WILL DO SPLENDIDLY. IT'S A VERY OLD GOAT."]
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