Page:The council of seven.djvu/254

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truly formidable body, who it was confidently believed must turn the scale at any parliamentary election.

If you wore in your buttonhole a small purple disc emblazoned with the Prince of Wales' feathers which was given you in exchange for a year's subscription, paid in advance, to the Planet, the Mercury or any of the thousand and one daily or weekly publications of the U. P. throughout the habitable globe, you were free of a great society which had the power of conferring subtle and unexpected benefits upon you. With that talisman in your buttonhole any retail grocer between China and Peru was bound to take twopence off a half-pound packet of U. P. tea. And There Was No Tea Like It. The great ones of the earth, from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Sir Augustus Bimley to Rube Rooker, the pitcher of the Chicago Pinksox and White Walker the Black Hope of South Dakota, continually affirmed that inspiring truth in tube and bus, in every newspaper, on every hoarding. There Was No Tea Like It.

It was the same with U. P. cocoa, U. P. tobacco, U. P. condensed milk, U. P. canned pears. If you bought a U. P. reach-me-down you were entitled to free membership of Blackburn Rovers, or Tottenham Hotspur, or Old Trafford, or Kennington Oval, or the U. P. Music Roll Society, or the U. P. Book Club, according to your geographical situation and your natural proclivities. Moreover, each purchase entitled you to a coupon. And if in the course of a twelve-