Page:Tono-Bungay.djvu/188

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180
TONO-BUNGAY

think they are quite well," was one of his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, "do not need drugs or medicine," and "simply a proper regimen to get you in tone." One was warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed "much advertised nostrums" on one's attention. That trash did more harm than good. The thing needed was regimen—and Tono-Bungay!

Very early, too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was usually a quarter column in the evening papers; "hilarity—tono-bungay. Like Mountain Air in the Veins." The penetrating trio of questions: "Are you bored with your Business? Are you bored with your Dinner? Are you bored with your Wife?"—that too was in our Gower Street days. Both these we had in our first campaign when we worked London south, central, and west; and then, too, we had our first poster,—the health, beauty, and strength one. That was his design; I happen still to have got by me the first sketch he made for it. I have reproduced it here with one or two others to enable the reader to understand the mental quality that initiated these familiar ornaments of London. (The second one is about eighteen months later, the germ of the well-known "Fog" poster; the third was designed for an influenza epidemic, but never issued.)

These things were only incidentally in my department. I had to polish them up for the artist and arrange the business of printing and distribution, and after my uncle had had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertisement manager of the Daily Regulator about the amount of display given to one of his happy thoughts, I also took up the negotiation of advertisements for the press.

We discussed and worked out distribution together