"Silly clothes, aren't they?" he
said at the sight of my startled eye. "I don't know why I got'm. They
seemed all right over there."
He had come down to our Raggett Street place to discuss a benevolent
project of mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable
discourse over the heads (I hope it was over the heads) of our bottlers.
"What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry.... That's where
we get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory
like this. Think!... One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very
possibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round 'em and sell
'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I'll admit, him and his dams, but
after all there's a sort of protection about 'em, a kind of muddy
practicality! They prevent things getting at him. And it's not your
poetry only. It's the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to
poet--soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty--in a bottle--the magic
philtre! Like a fairy tale....
"Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I'm calling it
footle, Ponderevo, out of praise," he said in parenthesis.
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