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Seventy-nine

Tangible Appreciation

An Advertisement by Fra Elbertus

ORDS are the airy, fairy butterflies of the imagination.

¶A philologist is a man who catches words and sticks a pin through them, fastening them to the wall.

A static language is a dead language.

Our language is not English—it is more: it is Americanese, and very much alive.

Bill Reedy of Saint Louis—and the Universe—is the best writer of Americanese in the world, with one exception.

If you do not know who this exception is, there is no use of telling, for you would n't believe it, anyway.

Bill has facility, felicity and fecundity. Also, he resembles your old college chum, Fuzzy Wuzzy, in this respect: he doesn't give a dam.

¶A dash of indifference is necessary to art.

Bill says, says he, "Class B literature is literature that is good enough to print, but not good enough to pay for."

Writers who would win should lose no time in getting into Class A, where the choice stuff is paid for in good Taft dolodocci.

Not that we care for money—oh, no! but money is the measure of appreciation. Patronage is awful—charity is worse—get free!

As long as you are anxious about what is to become of your brain children, you are unfitting yourself for good work. Make way for liberty, literature and light! Get free from the microbe of fear.

Just here is where the Literary Broker comes in, to aid you good folks who liberate your airy, fairy butterflies and send them flitting through the void. He can market your wares in a way you never can, yourself.

¶The Broker can tell you, also, what to write in order to supply a certain demand.

"A man alone is no man," said Aristotle twenty-three centuries ago. It's the same now. The man who wins is the one who knows how to avail himself of the Cosmic Cut-Off, utilizing the services of others.

¶The Literary Bureau helps authors to help themselves.

Don't lie down on your friends.

Don't ask for the loan of the large furry ear of your kinsmen.

Get things on an impersonal, business basis, and climb out of Class B on the back of a Business Booster who acts as a buffer between your feelings and the Cold and Crewel. That's us!

THE LITERARY BUREAU

Suite 809-812 Stephen Girard Bldg., PHILADELPHIA

December, 1910

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One Hundred Twenty-nine

The B. F. Goodrich Co.

By ELBERT HUBBARD

MERSON said, "The first man who made a pair of shoes carpeted the earth with leather."

By making a rubber tire, Doctor B. F. Goodrich paved the roadways with rubber.

The B. F. Goodrich Company is the lengthened shadow of Doctor Goodrich.

The man is dead, but his spirit abides, and his soul goes marching on. If, from his reserved seat in the Valhalla Ad Club, he looks down on us now, he must be proud of Akron, for without The B. F. Goodrich Company, there would be no Akron.

Having just spent a half-day at The B. F. Goodrich Company Works, my adjective tank is exhausted. An expurgated chapter of *The Essay on Silence* seems a fitting thing to recite.

The roadways of the world are carpeted with Akron productions of. And in the Goodrich Tire I see the gradual and sure, certain, absolute evolution and revolution of the tire industry.

Any tire that minimizes friction, lessens the danger of wear and tear on your vocabulary, and tends to keep not only your temper but your walletoski intact, is bound, in time, to get the tangible recognition of mankind—granting, of course, that it is properly publicized.

The rubber tire made the automobile possible, just as the iron rail made the locomotive a fact. If Doctor Goodrich had invented the rubber tire before Stephenson utilized the steel rail, the railroads would never have been built.

Possibly yet the streak of rust and the right of way will live only in history, passing into the realm of things that were, like the high-wheel bicycle, the beaver, the wild pigeon, the buffalo, the dodo and side whiskers.

Transportation is the second most important thing in the world; and he who lubricates transportation is a world-builder, a benefactor of his kind, and will live in the hearts of humanity.

The rubber tire traces a pedigree to the rubber hose, and the rubber hose, reinforced with cotton, traces to the brain of Doctor B. F. Goodrich.

Great was Doctor Goodrich. Great, passing great, is the institution that he founded. Every one of this vast Goodrich Family should be proud that he is connected with an institution so widely beneficent. The B. F. Goodrich Company lessens the jars of life, minimizes its bumps, speeds us on our way, and supplies a meal-ticket to one hundred thousand people. Such is modern organization.

Adios, Doctor Goodrich, my Stetson's in my hand.

February, 1913