Did you ever
hear Moody and Sankey?" he asked abruptly.
The man is an idiot, thought I; he is now fairly carried away with his
particular mania. Will it last long? Shall I ring?
"Novelty, my dear sir," he went on, "is the rule of the day; and there
must be novelty in advertising, as in everything else, to catch the public
interest. So I intend to go on a tour, lecturing on the merits of
Poulter's Pills in all the principal halls of all the principal towns all
over the world. But I have been delayed in carrying out my idea till I
could associate myself with a gentleman such as yourself. Will you join
me? I should be the Moody of the tour; you would be its Sankey. I would
speak my patter, and you would intersperse my orations with melodious
ballads bearing upon the virtues of Poulter's Pills. The ballads are all
ready!"
So saying, he opened that bag and drew forth from its recesses nothing
more alarming than a thick roll of manuscript music.
"The verses are my own," he said, with a little touch of pride; "and as
for the music, I thought it better to make use of popular melodies, so as
to enable an audience to join in the chorus. See, here is one of the
ballads: 'Darling, I am better now.' It describes the woes of a fond
lover, or rather his physical ailments, until he went through a course of
Poulter.
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