“How do you think of such things?” I inquired. “Tell me your processes.”
He laughed deprecatingly. “I have given the subject an immense deal of
thought,” he said. “For many years now I have done little else; I am
always on the look-out for ideas. They come to me at all kinds of odd
times and in all kinds of odd places. In bed--on a ’bus--in the train.”
“This one?” I asked.
“‘Phast-phix’?” he replied. “Oh, I thought of that instantaneously. You
see, the firm came to my office to say they were putting a new gum or
cement on the market, and they must have a good name for it at once.
I had no time. I buried my head in my hands, for a few seconds (my
regular habit) and suddenly ‘Phast-phix’ flashed into it. They were
enchanted.”
“I notice,” I said, “a tendency among advertisers to transform ‘f’ into
‘ph.’”
“Yes,” he said, “they got it from me. I was the first. It is far more
striking, don’t you think? To spell ‘fast-fix’ correctly wouldn’t be
witty at all.”