Advertising patter

U 15.2192: Rush your order and play a slick ace.

‘Rushing your order’ was a standard formula in the mail-order world of America around the time of the First World War. Here’s one of many instances:

Stop paying exorbitant prices for groceries... Establish yourself with the great Consumers’ Wholesale Grocery Co. And cut the high cost of living. Rush your order today. [...] Use the coupon.

Popular Mechanics (1917) December, p. 114

U 15.2201: It’s a lifebrightener

The advertiser of amazing new products for washing clothes – always astounding in their ability to produce whiteness out of grey – found ‘life-brightener’ a useful expression around Bloomsday 1904 in this medley of Americanisms:

Work-Saver, clothes-saver, clothes-whitener, life brightener – Fels-Naptha. Cuts wash-day in half. Fels-Naptha. Philadelphia.

Baltimore American (1904) 16 July

U 15.2203: It is immense, supersumptuous.

‘Super-sumptuous’ was a popular advertising cliché of the 1920s – though it is recorded earlier too. Here’s an ad from the Washington Post of 4 December 1921, selling the delights of the ‘only musical show in town’, ‘first time in Washington’, ‘The mirthful, Melodious, Magnificent, Music-comedy from the Ambassador’s Theater, New York’:

Poli’s... The Rose Girl. Super Sumptuous Anselm-Goetzl Production.

(Amusements section) p. 5

U 15.2201: A buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number.

We might note that ‘Elijah took a joy ride to heaven in a chariot with horses of fire’ in Gulian Lansing Morrill’s Devil in Mexico (1917), p. 186. Morrill was Pastor of the People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

U 15.2202-3: It’s just the cutest snappiest line out.

Again this is familiar from American advertisements of the day:

Children’s Gingham Dresses. Special. Large assortment of Children’s Dresses in a wide variety of styles, the cutest, snappiest dresses that ever left a factory.

Warren Evening Times (Pennsylvania) (1918) 3 May, p. 4

How about a Spring Cap? We have the snappiest line out this season, and the prices are right.

Iowa City Press-Citizen (1921) 2 March, p. 2

Harald Beck/John Simpson

Writing Elijah

Silly sunphonies: does Jesus want me for a sunbeam?

Slippery gamblers Philately is for bumboosers

Advertising patter Next stop Paradise!

The Great Harmonia and the music of the spheres

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