JIG 
 
 ulian Street 
 
 ornia 
 tal 
 
 7

 
 SUNBEAMS, INC.
 
 Books by Julian Street 
 
 ABROAD AT HOME 
 
 AFTER THIRTY 
 
 AMERICAN ADVENTURES 
 
 THE NEED OF CHANGE 
 
 THE MOST INTERESTING AMERICAN 
 
 (A close range study of Theodore Roosevelt) 
 
 PARIS A LA CARTE 
 SHIP-BORED 
 WELCOMH TO OUR CITT 
 THE GOLDFISH 
 
 (For Children)
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS
 
 BY 
 JULIAN STREET 
 
 FRONTISPIECE 
 
 BY 
 ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 1920
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191i), 1920, BY 
 
 JULIAN STREET 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING TUE SCANDINAVIAN
 
 Stack Annex 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. HENRY BELL BROWN ...... 3 
 
 II. A LITTLE BANQUET ....... 16 
 
 III. AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER .... 38 
 
 IV. THE SUNSHINE IDEA ...... 49 
 
 V. GLOOM CHASERS ........ 61 
 
 VI. THE UPLIFT BUSINESS ...... 72 
 
 VII. SUNSHINE WINS THE WAR ..... 81 
 
 VIII. THE PUNDITS CLUB ....... 88 
 
 IX. A BIG BANQUET ........ 101 
 
 X. A LOVING CUP 112 
 
 2132937
 
 SUNBEAMS, INC.
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 
 
 FROM the outset the event was spoken 
 of as a banquet. Little Jimmy Otis 
 called it that when he proposed the 
 plan, and his fellow workers on the staff of the 
 New York Evening Dispatch accepted the term 
 with even less question than they did the plan, 
 because it was obviously the right term in the 
 case of Henry Bell Brown. In honour of some 
 one else a feed or a blowout might have been 
 suggested, but for Henry Bell Brown nothing 
 less than a banquet seemed to suffice. Even 
 in those days, you see, he was tacitly recognized 
 as a banquet sort of person. 
 
 Nor is it more revealing of the thing Brown 
 called his "personality" that the farewell festivi 
 ties proposed in his honour should take this 
 sumptuous form and title, than it is revealing of 
 the character of Jimmy Otis that he should 
 
 3
 
 4 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 have been the one to think of giving Brown a 
 send-off. For Otis was by nature one of those 
 amiably disposed individuals who may broadly 
 be classified as givers; whereas Brown was by 
 nature a taker or at the least, and the politest, 
 an accepter. Otis always had a cheap cigarette 
 for any one who wanted it; Brown always had a 
 good cigar for himself. 
 
 But where Otis s cigarettes, being purchased 
 to suit his own taste and pocketbook, were at 
 least uniform, Henry Bell Brown s cigars had no 
 uniformity, but reflected in their various brands 
 and shapes the taste and affluence of such men 
 as had recently been interviewed by him. There 
 was that about Brown which caused men to 
 offer him cigars, though just what made them 
 do so might be difficult to say. 
 
 With Otis it was different; he did not get so 
 many or such good ones; and as he did not smoke 
 cigars those he did receive usually found their way 
 to Brown s breast pocket, whence in due course 
 they were removed, to be smoked by Brown, 
 if good enough; or if not, then to be presented 
 by him, with that handsome liberality of gesture 
 he commanded, to one of the compositors or to
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 5 
 
 his barber, or, if very dubious, to a certain 
 coloured man who ran one of the elevators in the 
 Dispatch Building and enjoyed Brown s good 
 opinion because he always touched his cap to 
 Brown but never to any other reporter. 
 
 Otis suggested his plan one afternoon when 
 the last edition had gone to press and the city 
 room of the Dispatch had turned into a place 
 of peace, tobacco smoke, and mild political dis 
 cussion. Having finished a Saturday special 
 and lighted one of his bad cigarettes from the 
 very brief end of another he put the cover over 
 his typewriter and strolled to the desk of the 
 assistant city editor, Yoakum, around whom 
 several men in their shirt sleeves were reclining 
 on desks and tilted chairs. 
 
 "Say," he said, addressing the entire group, 
 "I ve been thinking about Brown." 
 
 "So has Brown," returned the column con 
 ductor, dryly. 
 
 "Sure he has," admitted Otis. "And why 
 not? If he doesn t think of himself, who s 
 going to? If some of the rest of us were to do 
 a little more thinking for ourselves, along simi 
 lar lines, we d be a lot better off."
 
 6 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "That s no dream," agreed one of the group. 
 
 "I call it pretty neat work," Otis continued, 
 "for a fellow to think himself out of a forty -five- 
 dollar-a-week job in this rotten newspaper 
 game, and into seventy-five a week in a decent, 
 respectable business." 
 
 "But are you sure it is that?" asked the 
 city -hall man. "I hope it is, but Beman 
 says " 
 
 "The advertising business?" broke in Otis. 
 "Why " 
 
 "I mean this firm Brown s going with," re 
 turned the other. " Beman says they do a big 
 business and put up a big front. But it s too 
 much front and not enough back, according to 
 him. Too many oil and mining stocks to sell 5 
 and a lot of that Free-to-you-my-suffering-sister 
 medical advertising." 
 
 "I don t believe it," Otis said. 
 
 "Well, if it s front they re looking for," put 
 in the make-up editor, who had recently been 
 married, "Brown s got that, all right." 
 
 "He s got more than front," Otis defended. 
 "He s got initiative." 
 
 "Yes," added the column conductor; "Henry
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 7 
 
 Bell Brown has lots of initiative but very little 
 referendum." 
 
 "Well, I didn t come over here to take him 
 apart and find out what makes him tick," Otis 
 went on. "I came over to propose that we 
 give him a nice little send-off a week from Satur 
 day night after he quits." 
 
 "What kind of a send-off?" asked Bolton, the 
 society editor. 
 
 "A testimonial banquet." 
 
 "Very nice," approved a young reporter. "I 
 know a little restaurant where 
 
 "I think he might accept a testimonial ban 
 quet if it was done in a style to suit his rank and 
 station," interrupted the column conductor. 
 "At times he s quite democratic." 
 
 "All the same," said the city-hall man, who 
 was financing his daughter in a stenographic 
 course, "Brown s the highest-paid man on the 
 reportorial staff, and if, as he says, this advertis 
 ing firm has offered him nearly twice his present 
 pay, why, then 
 
 "That s it!" broke in the young reporter. 
 "It ought to be a farewell banquet from him 
 tons!"
 
 8 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "Now if you re all through with your wooden- 
 shoe stuff," Otis went on, patiently, "I will 
 elucidate: Here s a man that has made good 
 on this paper. He s going to a new job, and if 
 we aren t a lot of bilious knockers we wish him 
 well. We may kid about Brown, but just the 
 same there isn t a-man here who doesn t respect 
 him." 
 
 "Sure," said the irrepressible youth. "I 
 respect any newspaper man that has his clothes 
 made to order and carries a cane." 
 
 "Oh, I don t know," interjected the column 
 conductor. "Bolton carries a cane." 
 
 "I said newspaper man, " returned the other. 
 "That has nothing to do with society editors." 
 
 "Be careful, young fellow," said Bolton, good- 
 naturedly, "or you may find out why I carry a 
 cane." 
 
 "So," continued Otis, speaking as though 
 there had been no interruption whatsoever, 
 "the proposition is before you. How about a 
 banquet for Brown? " 
 
 "What s it going to cost?" asked the city-hall 
 man, Murphy by name. 
 
 "Two dollars a head," said Otis, "including
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 9 
 
 cocktails, dinner, red wine, oratory, and a solid 
 silver loving cup with all our names engraved 
 on it, to be presented to the victim." 
 
 "Two dollars! And a loving cup!" cried the 
 city-hall man. "Why not buy him a limousine, 
 too?" 
 
 "Here s the way it figures out," Otis went on, 
 placidly: "I thought Rafaelli s in West Thir 
 teenth Street would be a good place to give it. 
 Not too cheap and not too dear. I saw Rafaelli 
 about it this morning. He ll furnish his regular 
 table d hote and give us a big private room on 
 the second floor without extra charge." 
 
 "That s eighty-five cents apiece, isn t it?" 
 asked Murphy. 
 
 "Yes. Fifteen cents more each for tips 
 makes an even dollar; and seventy -five cents 
 more on top of that figuring on twenty of us 
 being there makes fifteen dollars, which will 
 cover the cost of a very decent little loving cup 
 that Beman says he can get at the wholesale 
 rate from some advertiser." 
 
 "That s a dollar seventy-five each, so far," 
 computed Murphy, grimly. 
 
 "Yes. And twenty-five cents more apiece
 
 10 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 ought to cover the engraving of the cup, flowers 
 for the table, and other incidentals." 
 
 "It won t," declared Bolton. "And besides, 
 a dollar has to come out of the general fund for 
 Brown s own dinner and tip. Remember, we 
 have to pay that. Better make it two and a 
 quarter each, Jimmy." 
 
 "Not on your life!" protested Murphy. 
 "We all like Brown. We re all for this scheme. 
 But two dollars is too much. Cut out the cup, 
 I say, and go to a cheaper place." 
 
 "I know a little restaurant began the 
 young reporter. But he was cut short by the 
 column conductor, demanding: 
 
 "Who took you there?" 
 
 "If we re going to do this thing at all," Otis 
 said, "we ought to do it right especially as 
 it s for Henry Bell Brown." 
 
 "Correct," put in Yoakum, who had not 
 spoken before. "If it s made a real occasion 
 it ought to make him feel good all the rest 
 of his life. Call it two dollars a head, and 
 if it runs over that we ll get the Old Man to 
 dig." 
 
 The others chiming in with this, Otis nomi-
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 11 
 
 nated the column conductor and the society 
 editor to serve with him in making the arrange 
 ments. Thus, when, in the middle of Brown s 
 final week on the paper, it was decided to inform 
 him that a banquet in his honour was impend 
 ing, the pleasant duty of giving him this infor 
 mation fell to Bolton s lot. 
 
 He caught Brown at noontime in the lower 
 hall of the building. 
 
 "There s a plan on foot to give you a little 
 farewell banquet on Saturday night, old man," 
 he said. "The fellows wanted me to let you 
 know so that you wouldn t make any other 
 engagement." 
 
 "That s certainly very nice of the boys," said 
 Brown. "Where is it to be held? " 
 
 "At Rafaelli s," said Bolton. 
 
 "Rafaelli s? Let s see; that s a table d hote 
 place, isn t it?" 
 
 "Yes. West Thirteenth Street. Haven t you 
 ever eaten there?" 
 
 Brown shook his head. 
 
 "I ve gotten rather into the way of dining at 
 Sullivan s," he said. "I ve often thought of 
 trying some of those little places in the side
 
 12 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 streets. I suppose I d have saved a good deal 
 of money if I d done it." 
 
 Somehow, without quite knowing why, Bol- 
 ton began to feel a little bit apologetic. 
 
 "You ll find Rafaelli s pretty fair," he said. 
 "Of course it isn t Sullivan s. That s under 
 stood. But we re going to have a private room 
 and a good time just the same." 
 
 "Oh, of course," Brown hastened to say. 
 "Naturally you understand I appreciate that 
 it s the spirit of a thing like this that counts 
 not where you give it or how much it costs." 
 
 "Still, it ought to be done right," Bolton said. 
 Then after a moment s hesitation he went on: 
 "The fact is, we could have given the banquet 
 at Sullivan s we have enough money to do it. 
 But the fellows thought they d rather go a little 
 easy on the cost of the actual meal and put 
 the extra money into something you can always 
 keep as a souvenir of the occasion." 
 
 "That s bully! Do you know what they re 
 planning to get me? " 
 
 "A loving cup with an inscription and all our 
 names on it," said Bolton. "But don t let on 
 that you know. It s meant to be a surprise."
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 13 
 
 "Oh, I ll be surprised," Brown reassured with 
 a smile. "A loving cup will be fine. To get 
 all the names on will take quite a fair-sized cup, 
 too, I should think." 
 
 " Yes. It ought to be quite a nice cup." 
 
 "As long as you re picking it out," said 
 Brown, "I know it will." 
 
 "The cup s not my part of the job," Bolton 
 said. "Jimmy Otis is handling that end of it 
 the business end." 
 
 "Oh," commented Brown. "Well, I m sorry 
 you re not handling that end, too, old man. 
 Otis is a good chap a mighty good chap but 
 I don t know how he is on taste. He certainly 
 doesn t show any in the way he dresses. Has. 
 he bought the cup yet? " 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "Well, if he hasn t you might get a chance to 
 put a flea in his ear. Why don t you go with 
 him when he picks it out? What I m afraid of 
 is that he ll get something too ornate. He ll 
 probably think an ornate cup is handsomer than 
 a simple colonial design. But you try to edge 
 him toward something simple, old man. The 
 simple ones look a lot richer."
 
 14 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "I ll try." 
 
 "Not that any cup the fellows give me won t 
 be highly valued," Brown added, "but only that 
 since they are giving it they d rather it would be 
 just tjie thing I d like." 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 "How did they come to select Otis to pick 
 out the cup?" 
 
 "They didn t select him, exactly. He said 
 he d undertake that part of the job. You see 
 Otis suggested the whole idea of giving you a 
 banquet." 
 
 "It was certainly very decent of him," said 
 Brown. "I ll have to thank him personally." 
 
 "Then it s all understood," Bolton said. 
 "We ll be looking for you at Rafaelli s next 
 Saturday evening at seven-thirty sharp." 
 
 " Eighty you are." 
 
 Then evidently feeling that a special show of 
 appreciation was in order Henry Bell Brown 
 drew from the breast pocket of his waistcoat 
 three dissimilar cigars a large thick cigar, a 
 middle-sized cigar, and a small cigar and 
 inspected them. 
 
 "Have a smoke, old man," he said, passing
 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 15 
 
 the one of intermediate size to the society editor,, 
 while with the other hand he returned the corona 
 and the chica to his pocket. 
 
 "Thanks," returned Bolton, gratefully, as he 
 accepted the gift. "Coming from you, Brown., 
 I know it s a good one, too." 
 
 "You ll find it all right," Brown returned, 
 nodding. " It s really worth while giving you a 
 good Havana, Bolton, because you re the kind 
 of chap that knows what good tobacco is. 
 That s more than any of the other fellows do. 
 One reason I ll be glad to leave this shop is 
 that I ll be free from the stink of Jimmy Otis s 
 cigarettes." 
 
 With this interchange of compliments they 
 parted, each filled with a curious and agreeable 
 feeling of sophistication and importance. 
 
 "There s a fellow that s going to win out," 
 thought Bolton as he went up in the elevator. 
 
 "With just a bit of help," thought Brown, 
 "that fellow might get along in the world."
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 
 
 SO FAR as Henry Bell Brown had been 
 able to ascertain, he was one of but three 
 reporters on the Dispatch possessing 
 dress suits, and was alone in the possession of a 
 garment he termed a"tuc" meaning a tuxedo 
 meaning a dinner coat. But whereas in the 
 past he had rejoiced, more or less privately, in 
 this sartorial equipment, as symbolic of the 
 superiority of which he could not help being con 
 scious, he now found himself wishing that every 
 man on the Dispatch staff owned evening clothes 
 of one kind or another. Nor was this wish as 
 generous as might at first appear. He did not 
 care whether the others had evening clothes at 
 that moment or whether they had them next 
 week. His wish was that they should have 
 them on the approaching Saturday night, in 
 order that his festival should present such a 
 
 16
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 17 
 
 picture of brilliant dignity as may be attained 
 only where lustrous white shirt bosoms and 
 silken facings garnish a banquet board. He 
 would have liked to feel that there would be 
 dress suits around him. 
 
 In view, however, of the fact that there would 
 not be dress suits around him, he found it nec 
 essary to ponder considerably the matter of his 
 own attire for the celebration, and it was not 
 until he came to the point of dressing for the 
 banquet that he succeeded in making up his 
 mind what to wear. In doing so he developed 
 a philosophy of dress to which he determined to 
 adhere in future. 
 
 "The thing to do," he said to himself, "is 
 always to be dressed correctly, regardless of what 
 others may wear. Let them be wrong if they 
 like; that is not your affair. You be right." 
 
 No one who has read a theatre programme be 
 tween the acts can be in any doubt as to what is 
 the correct costume to be worn at a banquet 
 attended only by men. " For such an occasion," 
 says the theatre programme, "the dinner suit, 
 with its air of semi-formality, is preeminently, 
 solely, and par excellence the proper thing."
 
 18 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 Henry Bell Brown therefore donned his "tuc." 
 Then after placing in his pocket one single large 
 cigar he left the room-and-bath he was given to 
 calling his bachelor apartment, and walked down 
 to Madison Square, stopping on the way to pur 
 chase a white carnation for his buttonhole. 
 
 It was twenty minutes past seven when he 
 reached Madison Square. He strolled about 
 for ten minutes, then took a hansom and ordered 
 himself driven to Rafaelli s. That, he felt, 
 was the way a man ought to arrive at a banquet 
 given in his honour alone in a hansom, and a 
 little late. He could fancy them already be 
 ginning to look for him anxiously, and he hoped 
 that they would see him as he drove up. Un 
 fortunately, however, the banquet room was on 
 the second floor at the rear of the old brown- 
 stone residence which Rafaelli had converted 
 for his purposes ; consequently the arrival of the 
 guest of honour in his equipage was not observed. 
 
 Henry Bell Brown looked at the front win 
 dows of the little restaurant as he alighted; see 
 ing no one peering out he ordered the cabby to 
 wait, and entered the building. In the hall he 
 paused and drew from his wallet a twenty-dollar
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 19 
 
 bill. Then he ascended to where familiar voices 
 echoing down the stairway from the floor above 
 told him his hosts were gathered. 
 
 "Ah, here he is! Here s Brown! Here he is 
 at last ! " came the genial chorus of welcome as he 
 appeared. 
 
 "Hello, fellows!" he returned. "Will some 
 body give me change for a twenty?" He held 
 out the bill. " I want to pay my cab." 
 
 "A twenty?" exclaimed Otis, making a field 
 glass of his two hands and gazing at the bill. 
 "Nobody here ever saw a twenty before, let 
 alone changing one." 
 
 "And for a cab, too!" cried one of the young 
 reporters. 
 
 Of the entire group only Bolton took the re 
 quest gravely. Drawing out his own wallet he 
 inspected its contents; then with a shake of the 
 head he said : " I thought I could fix you, but 
 I can t quite make it. Sorry." 
 
 "Oh," said Brown turning to the stairs, 
 "then I ll just run down and get it from the 
 cashier." 
 
 "Hurry back," someone called after him. 
 "Here come the cocktails."
 
 SO SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 Near the bottom of the stairway Brown 
 paused, and looking back to see that he was 
 unobserved drew forth his wallet again, put 
 back the twenty-dollar bill, and took out 
 instead a greenback of the denomination of 
 one dollar. After replacing the wallet in his 
 pocket he proceeded to the street and paid 
 the cabman with the dollar bill, receiving back 
 fifty cents in change, out of which he tipped 
 the driver with a dime. Then he went upstairs 
 again. 
 
 He felt a little conscious as he took off his 
 overcoat and muffler, revealing the magnifi 
 cence beneath, for his white shirt bosom shone 
 forth alone in the assembly. Nor was he un 
 prepared for the brief tornado of not unfriendly 
 jeering that ensued, in which he heard himself 
 hailed variously as a waiter, as a sweetums, and 
 as Queen of the May. At this jesting he 
 smiled blandly, sipping the while at a cocktail 
 which, it struck him, was rather raw in flavour, 
 having been made, he supposed, of gin of an 
 inferior grade. Of the entire gathering Bolton 
 alone refrained from unseemly comment on his 
 costume.
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 21 
 
 "I wish I d known you were going to dress," 
 the society editor said as they seated them 
 selves side by side at the head of the table. 
 "I d have done it, too." Hearing which Brown 
 felt more than ever pleased with himself and 
 with Bolton. 
 
 "You ve got a mighty good head on you, old 
 man," he said. 
 
 And as the evening progressed so did his good 
 opinion of the master of ceremonies. He had 
 always recognized the fact that Bolton wore his 
 clothes w T ith a certain swagger, so that even 
 when the clothes themselves were not of the 
 newest, even when close observation detected 
 cracked cuffs, a shirt ripped in front near the 
 neckband, or a necktie becoming fuzzy from 
 long wear even then, the ensemble was what 
 in those days Brown was wont to term "classy"; 
 but now he began to see that Bolton possessed 
 social talents that harmonized with his appear 
 ance. He presided tactfully, genially, and with 
 discretion. 
 
 At intervals while the dinner was being served 
 songs which had been prepared for the occasion 
 were rendered to unity-turn accompaniments
 
 22 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 thumped out on a battered old piano by one of 
 the junior reporters whose touch hinted of very 
 recent college days. Most of the songs were 
 parodies in which the traits of familiar office 
 figures were set forth. Thus, for example, 
 Beman, of the advertising department, who was 
 allowed to attend by reason of his having se 
 cured the loving cup at the wholesale price, 
 found himself celebrated in a new version of 
 "The Englishman," from "Pinafore," running in 
 part as follows: 
 
 He might have been a sailor 
 A bartender or tailor, 
 
 Or just a baseball fan. 
 But in spite of all temptations 
 To other occupations 
 
 He s an advertising man. 
 
 So, too, though Miss Rosenstein, the alluring 
 secretary to the managing editor, was not pres 
 ent at the banquet, the occasion did not pass 
 without reference being made to the attentions 
 paid her by more than one member of the staff; 
 to the expense attaching to such enterprise; 
 and to the young woman s well-known talent
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 23 
 
 for extricating herself from these affairs not 
 only with a whole heart but oftentimes with 
 profit in the way of loot. The character of the 
 lyric version of this bit of office history, as 
 arranged by the column conductor, to the tune 
 of "The Rosary," may be gathered from the first 
 four lines: 
 
 The coin Fre spent to win your heart 
 Would buy a di mond pin, so fine: 
 I count it over every time we part 
 Miss Rosenstein. . . . 
 Miss Rosenstein. 
 
 As for Henry Bell Brown the song sung in 
 his honour was a lament, albeit not without a 
 certain note of ribald criticism, at his departure 
 from the paper. It was set to the tune of "We ll 
 Drink the Nut-Brown Ale," and something of 
 its sentiment may be gathered from the last 
 line of the refrain, which was: 
 
 What ails old Brown, the nut? 
 
 The small souvenir edition of the Dispatch, 
 prepared by the facile column conductor, con-
 
 24 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 tained the words of the songs, and as the red 
 wine flowed there manifested itself a tendency 
 on the part of the company to eliminate solos 
 and make each song unanimous; and though 
 the most amiably disposed person could not 
 have called the choruses musically harmonious 
 the most crabbed person could not, on the 
 other hand, have denied that they reflected a 
 harmony of another kind that of good fellow 
 ship. 
 
 When the coffee had been served, cigarettes 
 and cigars were passed. The guest of honour 
 accepted one of the cigars, but after inspecting 
 it with a frankly doubting eye laid it on the 
 tablecloth and drew out and lighted the large 
 Havana with which he had had the prescience 
 to fortify himself. Though the cocktails had 
 tasted rather raw and the wine rather acid 
 they had conjointly served their beneficial 
 purpose. More than ever before, perhaps, 
 Henry Bell Brown was feeling worldly, success 
 ful, important. He settled back in his chair, 
 blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke, and looked 
 about him. Here were more than twenty men 
 gathered to do him honour. Wasn t that proof
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 25 
 
 of his importance? Suppose any one of the 
 others had been leaving the Dispatch would 
 he have received a testimonial banquet? No. 
 Because none of them had personality. It s 
 personality that gets you somewhere. 
 
 Not that this banquet was anything remark 
 able, at that. From cocktails to coffee you 
 couldn t call the dinner or the drinks either 
 good or bad. Everything was middling. But 
 then, let it be remembered, the dinner and the 
 drinks weren t his affair. Others had provided 
 them. The sole things he had provided were 
 his presence and his own cigar. And both, he 
 felt, were of the best. 
 
 "For my part," he announced, expansively, 
 to Bolton, " I can stand a poor dinner and poor 
 drinks all right if I m sure of a first-class smoke 
 afterward." 
 
 "Well," approved Bolton, not without a 
 show of admiration, "you can afford good 
 cigars, so why shouldn t you have them? Be 
 lieve me, I m not going to spend my life slaving 
 for a little bit of a salary on the Dispatch, either. 
 I ve got my eye on something that looks pretty 
 good right now; if it goes through, you and I
 
 26 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 may be doing a little business by this time 
 next year." 
 
 " Glad to hear it, old man. Something in the 
 advertising line? " 
 
 "More or less. I don t mind telling you 
 just what it is seeing it s you. Did you 
 ever hear of a society paper called Tittle- 
 Tattle?" 
 
 " Seems to me I have." 
 
 "Well, they ve approached me with a propo 
 sition to edit it. I d have a good deal to do 
 with the business end, too. I m dickering now 
 for stock in the company." 
 
 "We might be able to give you some of our 
 business," said Brown with a large air of lib 
 erality. "Just let me know if there s anything 
 our corporation can do for you. Anyhow, 
 drop in our offices and see me once in a while. 
 I want to keep in touch with you, Bolton. Be 
 sides, I d like to show you the layout we ve got 
 up there. It s about the most refined and 
 tasty proposition in the line of office decoration 
 that you ll find in this town or any other. 
 Here s one of my new cards." As he spoke 
 he drew an engraved pasteboard from his
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 27 
 
 wallet and passed it to the other. It was 
 arranged as follows: 
 
 EFFICIENCY 
 
 MR. H. BELL BROWN 
 
 REPRESENTING 
 
 THE PUBLICITY DIRECTORS OF THE UNITED STATES, INC. 
 ADVERTISING ENGINEERS 
 
 CORNER FIFTH AVENUE AND FORTY-SECOND STREET 
 
 "Very neat," said Bolton, regarding the 
 card appreciatively before putting it in his 
 pocket. "I ll surely run in on you before long. 
 By the way, I see you re using an initial instead 
 of your first name in full. I like that. Seems 
 to give a name character." 
 
 "That s just the idea," Brown said. "As the 
 president of our company says: *A name s 
 nothing but a trademark. If a man s going 
 into the advertising profession the first thing 
 for him to advertise is his own name." 
 
 Bolton agreed. 
 
 Then, as the coffee was drunk and the cigars 
 and cigarettes were alight, he rapped upon the
 
 28 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 table for order, and in his capacity as master 
 of ceremonies rose and said some very flattering 
 things of H. Bell Brown. He mentioned sev 
 eral of Brown s most notable achievements as a 
 reporter, referred to his ability to "meet big 
 men on their own level," and spoke of the uni 
 versal high regard in which Brown was, he 
 affirmed, held not only outside the office but 
 within it. 
 
 "And now," he finished, "H. Bell Brown is 
 leaving us. It was from the first inevitable. 
 We have all recognized that to a man like him 
 the position of star reporter on the Dispatch 
 could at most be but a stepping-stone to higher 
 achievement. Who could meet H. Bell Brown 
 without realizing at once that the Fair Goddess 
 of Success had put her hallmark on him? But 
 successful as he is certain to be, affluent as he is 
 assuredly destined to become, we, his fellow- 
 workers, gathered here to do him honour, ask 
 him, as he looks back upon this happy, this 
 memorable evening, to recollect one thing 
 and one thing only namely, that the tribute 
 we are paying him is not a tribute to his talents, 
 his energies, his achievements; that it is not a
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 9 
 
 tribute to those qualities in him which point so 
 certainly toward great material prosperity; 
 but that, upon the contrary, this farewell 
 banquet represents a tribute to his personal 
 character that it is a spontaneous expression 
 of our esteem, our affection, for one who will 
 always be our comrade and our friend. Gentle 
 men, I ask you to rise aud join me in 
 drinking the health of H. Bell Brown the 
 Man." 
 
 It would be hard to say how much of the 
 applause that followed was for H. Bell Brown 
 the Man and how much for Bolton, whose 
 talent for oratory was now made known for 
 the first time to his colleagues. The toast 
 was, however, drunk enthusiastically, and in 
 a variety of liquors; for though the red wine 
 was holding out, a number of the men had 
 ordered further drinks on their own account. 
 Even Murphy, the city-hall man, who had at 
 first rebelled at the expense involved, now 
 had a highball of his own purchasing before 
 him, and was among the noisiest of the 
 enthusiasts. As the glasses were returned to 
 the table Otis started "For He s a Jolly Good
 
 30 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 Fellow!" and the song was bawled feelingly by 
 all. 
 
 Next the column conductor read a humor 
 ous prophecy in which the various men present 
 were shown as his waggishness suggested they 
 would be twenty years hence. The accented 
 individual in this forecast was, of course, H. Bell 
 Brown, the scene being laid at a banquet 
 given by Brown at his mansion on Fifth 
 Avenue formerly the Metropolitan Museum 
 of Art. At this banquet the members of the 
 Dispatch staff gathered, and each told his 
 story. 
 
 While the column conductor was reading 
 his prophecy Bolton left his place and went 
 to where Otis was sitting, halfway down the 
 table. 
 
 "I m going to call on you next," he said, 
 "to present the cup." 
 
 "No, you re not," Otis answered. "I ve got 
 the cup here, but I m not the one to present it." 
 He reached under the table, brought up a silver 
 smith s bag of soft maroon cloth, and placed it 
 in Bolton s hands. 
 
 "Of course you ll present it!" Bolton insisted.
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 31 
 
 "No," said Otis, firmly. "You ve got to 
 do it. The whole object is to do it right to 
 make old Brown feel his oats. Well, I m no 
 talker, and you are. You ve amazed us all. 
 You re a wonder. Give him some more of that 
 Grade A oratory of yours. Tell him how we 
 love him." 
 
 He was so evidently in earnest that Bolton 
 yielded. 
 
 "Just as you like," he said. "Only you got 
 this party up, Jimmy, and you ought to say 
 something." 
 
 "All right. I have something very effective 
 to say after you give him the cup. Just wait. 
 You ll see who turns out to be the real orator 
 of the evening!" 
 
 Thus to Otis s satisfaction it came about that 
 when the column conductor s prophecy had 
 been heard Bolton rose and, uncorking new vials 
 of praise, presented the cup to Brown. 
 
 Still seated, Brown took the vessel in one 
 hand and looked at the side on which the names 
 of the donors were engraved. The engraver 
 had certainly managed very well, he thought, 
 to get so many names on a surface so com-
 
 32 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 paratively small. He turned the cup and read 
 the inscription : 
 
 TO 
 HENRY BELL BROWN 
 
 IN TOKEN OF 
 THE ESTEEM, ADMIRATION, AND AFFECTION 
 
 OF 
 His FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS 
 
 ON THE STAFF OF 
 THE NEW YORK EVENING DISPATCH 
 
 "Very neat," he remarked to Bolton. 
 
 Meanwhile the assembled donors of the cup 
 were shouting and applauding. 
 
 "What s the matter with Brownie?" howled 
 Otis. 
 
 "He s all right! " from everyone. 
 
 "Who s all right?" 
 
 "Brownie!" 
 
 "Speech! Speech!" 
 
 Then, looking very clean, very well-dressed, 
 very composed, Henry Bell Brown stood up. 
 In planning his remarks he had at first thought 
 of beginning with some informal introductory 
 word, such as "Boys" or "Fellows"; but now,
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 33 
 
 what with the wine, the enthusiasm, and the 
 oratory of Bolton, he felt that informality would 
 seem a little out of place, coming from him. 
 The note for him to strike was not that of famil 
 iarity but of fine and gracious dignity. 
 
 "Mister Toastmaster, and gentlemen of the 
 staff of the New York Evening Dispatch" 
 thus impressively did he begin. Then after a 
 weighty pause he entered upon the body of his 
 address. 
 
 His first duty was, of course, to make them 
 think that he was satisfied. 
 
 "I feel sure," he said, "that no words of 
 mine can make you realize more fully than 
 you already must, how thoroughly I am pleased 
 by the tributes you have paid me to-night, in 
 words, in actions, and in giving me this" he 
 hesitated; he had meant to say "handsome," 
 but the word would not come out "this loving 
 cup. How true it is, my friends, that sentiment 
 is something that rises above all that is mun 
 dane all financial considerations, all the crass 
 materialism that surrounds us in our daily life. 
 How true ! And what better illustration of this 
 truth could we have than is presented here to-
 
 34 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 night? Look at this banquet! Do you think, 
 gentlemen, that because this banquet is held in 
 an unpretentious and inexpensive place, that 
 that makes it any the less significant to me? 
 No ! I am sure you all know me too well for that. 
 If this dinner had cost ten dollars a plate, still 
 to me it would not be any more desirable. Be 
 cause, my friends, as I have said before, no 
 money value can be placed on sentiment. And so 
 also with this cup. Do you suppose, gentlemen 
 of the New York Evening Dispatch, that if this 
 cup were two feet tall instead of only about six 
 inches, it would mean any more to me? Again 
 I say, No! Because it is not the weight or 
 size of a loving cup that counts. Where friend 
 ship and admiration are concerned, gold and 
 silver are the merest dross. 
 
 "No, gentlemen! The thing that counts 
 is what that loving cup means. The thing that 
 counts is the sentiment with which that cup is 
 given and the sentiment with which it is re 
 ceived. 
 
 "I want to say to you, gentlemen, that I shall 
 always keep this little cup before me. And I 
 want to say further that to me it will always be
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 35 
 
 a big cup. For sentiment and sentiment alone 
 is the standard by which such a thing must be 
 measured. 
 
 "And, gentlemen, each time I look at this cup 
 I shall receive anew the message you have given 
 me on this occasion. Each time I look at this 
 cup I shall say to myself: Henry Bell Brown, 
 remember what that cup means. It means that 
 the men with whom you were associated on the 
 Dispatch believed in you, had confidence in you, 
 picked you as a man who was destined to win 
 out in life! They placed their faith in you. 
 Therefore it is up to you to show them that they 
 were right; that besides being a success in a small 
 way on the paper, you can be a success in a larger 
 way, a success in other fields; so that some day 
 every man who participated in giving you the 
 banquet and the cup can look back and take 
 real pride in having done so. And why? Be 
 cause he picked you for a winner, and you have 
 won! That, gentlemen, is the message this 
 little cup will give me when I look at it as the 
 years roll by." 
 
 Having spoken thus he sat down, while his 
 hosts rising to their feet clapped their hands and
 
 36 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 cheered. Again he was hailed in song; then 
 Bolton called on Jimmy Otis. 
 
 "Fellows," said Otis, "I have no doubt that I 
 could deliver a speech that would make you all 
 burst into tears and go home. But I have 
 something here that speaks louder than words. 
 The publisher has asked me to fill the loving cup 
 with champagne at his expense, and keep it full 
 until it has passed round the table and everyone 
 has had all he wants everyone, that is, except 
 Murphy. And even Murphy can have all that 
 is good for him." 
 
 The publisher now became by universal ac 
 claim "A jolly good fellow . . . which 
 nobody can deny"; after which the all-right- 
 ness of Otis was loudly and rhythmically pro 
 claimed. 
 
 From the point of view of the guest of honour 
 the uncorking of champagne formed an apex 
 to the celebration, contributing that touch of 
 class which hitherto had been so sorely needed. 
 He counted the fresh bottles that were opened 
 as the cup progressed upon its way, and was 
 pleased to notice that as many as four quarts 
 had been required. Hitherto the publisher
 
 A LITTLE BANQUET 37 
 
 of the Dispatch had seemed to him austere, but 
 now he perceived that this exalted personage 
 had his human side after all. He wished that 
 the publisher had come to the banquet and 
 brought the managing editor and the city editor 
 with him. Maybe they would have been in 
 evening dress. That was the kind of thing 
 this party called for: Style people of real 
 consequence anything to tone it up. 
 
 The loving cup standing on the table was the 
 first thing he saw when he awoke on Sunday 
 morning. He lay for a time regarding it. No, 
 it certainly wasn t much of a cup. As far as 
 that went it hadn t looked like much of a cup 
 last night; but now in the cold morning light it 
 seemed smaller still. And that was just the 
 point. It typified, did that cup, the quality of 
 last night s party. Of course it was well meant. 
 But it was cheap.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 
 
 THE next day, Monday, between nine and 
 ten A.M., Mr. H. Bell Brown, wearing a 
 neat business suit and spats, and carry 
 ing a cane, arrived at the impressive offices of 
 The Publicity Directors of the United States, 
 Inc. Advertising Engineers and passing 
 through the wicket gate, with a nod to the red 
 headed young lady in attendance, strode across 
 the thick green carpet, the tone of which set off 
 the tint of the young lady s hair, to the door of a 
 certain private office upon the ground-glass panel 
 of which the name H. Bell Brown was already 
 emblazoned in small artistic letters of gold. 
 
 The office was the sixth in a row set off by a 
 partition of chastely tinted woodwork and 
 ground glass, each with a name upon the door. 
 Thus, an observer familiar with the official 
 personnel of The Publicity Directors of the 
 
 38
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 39 
 
 United States, Inc. Advertising Engineers 
 might learn that the first room, somewhat 
 larger than the others, was occupied by Berg 
 Ledbetter, president of the corporation, and 
 that the respective offices of the secretary and 
 treasurer, the office manager, the efficiency 
 director, and the chief solicitor a title of no 
 legal implication following in sequence, were 
 interposed between that of the president and 
 that of Brown. 
 
 This layout, as it was sometimes called, sug 
 gesting, as it did, a cross between a clubhouse 
 and a bank, was calculated to reassure the 
 doubter and to make the guilty feel respectable. 
 And that was desirable. 
 
 Brown spent the morning arranging his desk, 
 making initial plans, and dictating letters to 
 various business men with whom he had be 
 come acquainted as a reporter, announcing his 
 change of occupation and his readiness to place 
 at their disposal the services of The Publicity 
 Directors of the United States, Inc. Advertis 
 ing Engineers whose occupation it was to 
 formulate constructive advertising campaigns, 
 to prepare artistic illustrations and hard-hitting
 
 40 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 copy, and to place these to the best advantage. 
 In these letters he used the words "psychology" 
 and "psychological," but did not speak of 
 "functioning" that term not having entered 
 the vocabulary of advertising until some years 
 later. H. Bell Brown, you see, had been pre 
 paring himself in advance for his new work. 
 
 At midday Ledbetter entered Brown s office, 
 welcomed him to the employ of The Publicity 
 Directors of the United States, Inc. Advertis 
 ing Engineers (always written in red capitals 
 in the firm s letters) and invited him to join 
 several members of the corporation at luncheon, 
 for a "conference." Brown appreciated the 
 word, and thereafter made it his. Never again 
 during business hours was he known merely to 
 talk with people. Instead, he held conferences. 
 If someone entered his office or he entered the 
 office of someone else a conference was thereby 
 automatically created. Nor did he ever 
 "solicit" business after the manner of the 
 crass advertising man. He merely "conferred" 
 upon the subject. 
 
 Other expressions, too, there were, belong 
 ing to the terminology of The Publicity Direc-
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 41 
 
 tors of the United States, Inc. Advertising 
 Engineers. Being engineers instead of mere 
 advertising agents, the corporation required its 
 employees to use the word "profession" where- 
 ever possible, instead of the word "business," 
 while references to the advertising "game" 
 were regarded with horror. Similarly the cor 
 poration had clients, not customers. Stenog 
 raphers taking dictation were trained to watch 
 for crude expressions whiqh might accidentally 
 occur, and to correct these hi transcription by 
 the substitution of an elegance. "Psychology" 
 was perhaps the corporation s leading word; 
 but "synchronize," "coordinate," "merchan 
 dise" as a verb and "standardize" were not 
 neglected. 
 
 And so far as possible the corporation not 
 only talked standardization but practised it. 
 Its three leading lights lived up sartorially to 
 their professional aspiration by wearing braided 
 cutaway coats; all letters were required to be 
 written with a certain margin and certain 
 scheme of spacing, and all dates were spelled 
 out in full. Moreover, there were certain stand 
 ard paragraphs covering certain subjects, so
 
 42 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 that any officer or employee of the corporation 
 could drop them into, a letter at whatever point 
 he pleased, merely by saying to the stenog 
 rapher. "Insert M. paragraph" meaning the 
 standard paragraph on merchandising; or "S. 
 C. paragraph" meaning the standard para 
 graph on synchronization and coordination; or 
 * B. S. paragraph" meaning the standard 
 paragraph on better service which, however, 
 was spoken of in the paragraph itself as "service 
 of the better sort." 
 
 The first day s conference brought definite 
 results. On the way to the restaurant with 
 Ledbetter and the others Brown bought a copy 
 of the noon edition of the Dispatch just to see 
 how the old sheet was struggling on without 
 him- and there on the first page found, to his 
 amazement, something he had never dreamed 
 of finding. It was a heading dealing with 
 himself: 
 
 BANQUET TENDERED TO RETIRING 
 DISPATCH MAN 
 
 DINNER AND LOVING CUP GIVEN BY NEWSPAPER 
 ASSOCIATES TO H. BELL BROWN
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 43 
 
 Though short, the story was eminently gratify 
 ing. It not only spoke of Brown as one of the 
 ablest men on the Dispatch staff and declared 
 that he would be generally missed, but men 
 tioned Ledbetter and The Publicity Directors 
 of the United States, Inc. Advertising En 
 gineers. 
 
 To Brown this item gave triple satisfaction. 
 He was pleased that it had been printed at all, 
 more pleased that it appeared on the first page, 
 and still more pleased that Ledbetter s name 
 and that of the corporation were included. 
 For the latter point gave him an excuse to show 
 the little write-up forthwith to his employer. 
 That the writer of the article had foreseen such 
 a possibility and had with deliberate amiable 
 purpose mentioned Ledbetter and the corpora 
 tion did not occur to Brown, who regarded the 
 inclusion of them as a mere happy accident. 
 Nor did it occur to him to wonder how the story 
 had come to be written. Had he wondered he 
 would probably have guessed that Bolton did it, 
 but in that he would have been mistaken. 
 The anonymous beneficence was the work of 
 Jimmy Otis. Jimmy had taken the pains, that
 
 44 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 morning, to go down to the business office and 
 ascertain the name of the company and its presi 
 dent; then he had written the story, taken it 
 to the managing editor, and requested him to 
 make a "Must" of it. 
 
 "What s the idea?" the managing editor 
 asked him. 
 
 "It might help Brown to get off on his right 
 foot in his new job," said Otis. 
 
 "But the name of the company and this 
 man Ledbetter," muttered the managing editor, 
 shaking his head. "It s free advertising." 
 
 "Have a heart," urged Otis. 
 
 And though the policy of the Dispatch in such 
 matters was habitually anything but generous, 
 and though the managing editor was much 
 more skeptical concerning Brown than Otis 
 was, he thought enough of Otis to do as he 
 requested. 
 
 "Must!" he scrawled in blue pencil at the 
 head of Otis s copy, and into the paper it 
 went. 
 
 It seems not unlikely that had Brown known 
 all this he would not have been "in conference" 
 when some six weeks later Otis stopped in at
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 45 
 
 the offices of The Publicity Directors of the 
 United States, Inc. Advertising Engineers 
 to pay a friendly call. But how was Brown 
 to know? He was busy composing copy for 
 an ad. Already the Dispatch and the men 
 on the Dispatch seemed a long, long way 
 behind him. Otis didn t interest him any 
 way. Bolton was the only man down there who 
 counted. 
 
 The item did start Brown off as Otis had 
 hoped it would. Ledbetter not only liked to 
 see his own name in print but appreciated as 
 only an advertising engineer can, the advantage 
 of so fine a free advertisement for the corpora 
 tion. Moreover, this tangible evidence that 
 Brown s former associates held him in such high 
 regard crystallized Ledbetter s favourable opin 
 ion of his new employee. That was the first 
 result of the initial conference, and the second 
 was corollary to it. On that very day the ac 
 counts of several well-established clients of the 
 corporation were assigned to Brown to handle; 
 and even though one of these was the account 
 of an oil company claiming to own wells some 
 where in Oklahoma and desirous of selling stock
 
 46 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 at bargain prices, it was remarked in the office 
 that no new man had ever before been started 
 off with such a volume of important business to 
 look after. 
 
 Nor did Brown himself fail accurately to 
 gauge the value of the puff in the Dispatch. 
 It is doubtful if any one else perceived as clearly 
 as he what a splendid service it had rendered 
 him. It had put him ahead half a year at least; 
 perhaps a full year. Such is the power of pub 
 licity ! In thinking of what the little news item 
 had done for him he forgot for a time what had 
 been the occasion for its publication, and when 
 he did stop to reflect that the banquet had in 
 point of fact been at the bottom of it all the 
 thought amused him. The banquet had not 
 amounted to much, but the story of the banquet 
 that was indeed a different thing! The cup 
 had not amounted to much, but the mention of 
 it in a newspaper turned it as though by magic 
 into a thing of value. The men at the banquet 
 had not amounted to much, but those who 
 read about the banquet had no way of finding 
 that out. Turning the matter over in his mind 
 thus, H. Bell Brown developed a shrewd theory
 
 AN ADVERTISING ENGINEER 47 
 
 as to wherein the real value of a testimonial 
 banquet lies. He made a mental note of his 
 discovery, for future reference. 
 
 So, rapidly, occurred what Ledbetter called 
 Brown s "induction" into the profession of 
 advertising engineering. It would seem that 
 he was cut out for it. Either he learned with a 
 speed hardly short of miraculous, or else adver 
 tising engineering may be mastered in a much 
 shorter space of time than engineering in the 
 commoner branches. Had he, for example, 
 become an automobile engineer, a constructing 
 engineer, or a civil engineer, instead of an adver 
 tising engineer, and progressed as rapidly, he 
 would have been building motor cars, sky 
 scrapers, steel bridges, or railroads within a year 
 of the time that he commenced his scientific 
 delvings. For within the year he was quite 
 at home in all branches of the work of The 
 Publicity Directors of the United States, 
 Inc. Advertising Engineers and was handling 
 some of the corporation s most impressive 
 clients. 
 
 Among these accounts was that of the Gil- 
 fillan Laboratories, manufacturing chemists,
 
 48 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 and it was through the evolution of an idea con 
 ceived by H. Bell Brown in connection with a 
 new digestive pill being brought out by the Gil- 
 fillan Laboratories that the next great change 
 in his career occurred.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 
 
 ROWN had been with The Publicity Di 
 rectors of the United States, Inc. 
 Advertising Engineers for a number 
 of years and had more than doubled the annual 
 expenditure for advertising of the Gilfillan 
 Laboratories when old Gilfillan sent for him one 
 day to discuss plans by which his new digestive 
 pills might be eased in large quantities down the 
 public throat. Gilfillan, himself a chemist, had 
 taken a personal interest in the compounding 
 of the pill, and he had hit upon a combination 
 possessing medicinal properties and a flavour 
 which he believed would cause the pill to be 
 received with cries of joy by a dyspeptic world. 
 
 While the chemist described the pill and dis 
 cussed his hopes for it, Brown sat by and lis 
 tened in cold professional silence. For though 
 he knew Gilfillan well by this time he made it 
 
 49
 
 50 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 an invariable rule when in conference never to 
 let his client forget that he, H. Bell Brown, was 
 an advertising engineer, and that the dignity, 
 mystery, inscrutability of the profession of ad 
 vertising engineering was in his keeping. 
 
 "How far has work on this pill advanced?" 
 he demanded when Gilfillan stopped speaking. 
 
 "It is finished," said the chemist. "We ve 
 even got the bottle and the package." 
 
 "Mr. Gilfillan," said Brown, "have you for 
 gotten our talk when you were putting Boriol 
 upon the market? Have you forgotten how I 
 then pointed out that the science of advertising 
 engineering does not properly begin with the 
 mere merchandising of a product, but ought to 
 be applied from the moment that a product is in 
 process of creation? " 
 
 "That s all right," said Gilfillan, "but we 
 made a go of Boriol just the same." 
 
 "Boriol," said Brown, "was never the success 
 it should have been. I was not called in soon 
 enough. I should like to see a sample of the 
 new pill and the container." 
 
 Gilfillan produced them from a drawer of his 
 desk.
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 51 
 
 The brown cardboard wrapper inclosing the 
 bottle bore in large black capital letters the 
 legend: Gilfillan s Dyspepsia Pills. Below was 
 a list of many unpleasant symptoms and 
 conditions for which the tablets were recom 
 mended. The bottle within was also brown, 
 and the pills, which had a glossy coating, were 
 of an even darker shade of brown. 
 
 The chemist watched the advertising engineer 
 as he progressed with his inspection. 
 
 "Well?" he demanded as the latter laid the 
 packet, bottle, and pills upon the desk again. 
 
 " You desire my opinion? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "No good," said Brown, tersely. He waved 
 a hand dismissively at the articles he had just 
 put down. 
 
 "No good?" cried Gilfillan. "You must be 
 crazy, Brown ! Why, what do you know about 
 it? What do you know about a pill you haven t 
 even sampled? You don t even know what s in 
 it!" 
 
 Brown set his lips, gazed sternly at the chem 
 ist for a moment, then bringing his fist down 
 upon the desk replied forcefully: "No, sir!
 
 52 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 I don t know what s in it. And I don t care 
 what s in it. What s in it doesn t matter. 
 This is a proposition of psychology. As a 
 merchandising proposition I tell you this pill of 
 yours has nothing to recommend it." 
 
 The chemist looked angry, but as he opened 
 his mouth to speak Brown stopped him with a 
 question. To stop a client or a prospective 
 client with a question is a part of the science of 
 advertising engineering. 
 
 "Mr. Gilfillan," Brown demanded, "do you 
 know how many dyspeptics there are in the 
 United States?" 
 
 "Nobody knows that," the other replied. 
 
 Brown had the air of one who does not deign 
 explicitly to deny a foolish statement. 
 
 "There are in the United States twenty-two 
 million five hundred thousand cases of chronic 
 dyspepsia. That is in round numbers. Be 
 yond these chronic cases there are some seven 
 teen million erratic or semi-regular cases. 
 That makes a total of thirty -nine millions. 
 There is still another class of cases, which we 
 may describe as casuals; these being sporadic 
 cases of mere indigestion or biliousness, usually
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 53 
 
 the result of overeating or overdrinking, and 
 reaching the astonishing yearly total of fifty- 
 three millions." 
 
 "Where do you get your figures?" Gilfillan 
 demanded. 
 
 "From our own research department," 
 proudly answered the advertising engineer. 
 
 "All right," said the chemist, impressed but 
 not cowed, "what s the answer?" 
 
 "The answer is that the successful pill, the 
 big pill, the world-beating pill has not yet been 
 created," Brown declared. "And that brings 
 us to the question whether or not you propose 
 to be the genius who shall produce the ultimate 
 pill the pill that will be the acknowledged 
 leader that will be bought by the majority 
 of these millions of sufferers." He paused im 
 pressively; then emphasizing his words by 
 pounding his fist upon his palm he continued: 
 "Will you be the manufacturer of the ultimate 
 pill, Mr. Gilfillan, or will you not? Will you 
 seize the golden opportunity or will you leave it 
 to be seized by someone else? " 
 
 "But I ve got the pill right here," insisted 
 Gilfillan, indicating the bottle on the desk.
 
 54 SUNBEAMS, Ixc. 
 
 "No, sir, you have not!" said Brown. 
 
 "But as I said before," exclaimed the chem 
 ist, "you don t know what s in this pill of mine. 
 So how can you " 
 
 "Mr. Gilfillan," broke in Brown with great 
 impressiveness, " it is true, sir, that I do not know 
 what is in your pill. But mark this: It is also 
 true that I do know what must be in the ulti 
 mate pill. Your pill, Mr. Gilfillan, does not 
 contain the essential ingredient!" 
 
 "What is the essential ingredient, then?" 
 
 Ah! The advertising engineer tried not to 
 show how much this question pleased him . It was 
 the question for which he had been engineer 
 ing with every atom of his professional skill. 
 Moreover, he had managed to work Gilfillan 
 into asking it a little bit defiantly, which made 
 it all the better. He chose to hold his climax. 
 
 "Well, I ask you what is the chief symptom 
 of dyspepsia?" 
 
 "Stomach-ache depression," muttered Gil 
 fillan, groggily. 
 
 "Right! Depression! And what s the rem 
 edy the one logical, infallible, unanswerable, 
 inevitable remedy? Answer me that, sir!"
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 55 
 
 "Sodium bicar " 
 
 But H. Bell Brown would not let his client 
 answer. 
 
 "No, sir!" he broke in in a triumphant 
 shout. "The remedy, Mr. Gilfillan, the remedy 
 is sunshine /" 
 
 Having thus stunned his client he proceeded 
 to elucidate. 
 
 His theory was, in brief, that dyspepsia and 
 kindred disorders of the digestive tract produce 
 pessimism, melancholy, gloom; and, ergo, that 
 the things craved by victims of such ailments 
 are optimism, cheer, elation sunshine. The 
 colour brown, according to the findings of the 
 research department of The Publicity Direc 
 tors of the United States, Inc. Advertising 
 Engineers was a depressing colour. Obvi 
 ously, then, it was no colour for a pill for indiges 
 tion. What could be more depressing to a 
 man with the proverbial dark-brown taste in 
 his mouth than the sight of a dark-brown pill? 
 The ultimate pill must be different. Anybody 
 ought to be able to see that. 
 
 All right, then advertise sunshine. Call 
 your pills Sunshine Tablets, put them in a
 
 56 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 bright yellow bottle, and pack that bottle in a 
 carton also of bright yellow, with a picture of 
 the sun printed in gold. And above all, make 
 your tablets as yellow as the sun itself. 
 
 "If you could put phosphorus in them, so 
 they d be luminous at night," he told Gilfillan, 
 " that would be much better." 
 
 It was on the subject of the colour of the pills 
 that Brown and his client ultimately broke. 
 One was thinking of chemical, the other of psy 
 chological, reaction. Gilfillan insisted that the 
 brown pills were medicinally superior to any 
 thing that could be made in yellow; there were 
 chemical reasons, he said, why brown was best. 
 Give people relief, he contended, and they 
 wouldn t care what colour the pills were. He 
 wasn t making pills to please the eye, but to 
 soothe the stomach. Besides, the brown pills 
 were already in process of manufacture and he 
 didn t propose to throw them away. 
 
 Brown fought hard for his idea. He delivered 
 an oration on the growing understanding of the 
 power of mind over matter. Make a man be 
 lieve a thing was going to do him good and it 
 would do him good. Make him believe that
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 57 
 
 it would be good for him to eat a piece of yellow 
 chalk, then he would be benefited by that piece 
 of chalk more than by a brown pill the very 
 sight of which repelled him. This was not a 
 proposition of medicine but of merchandising. 
 What was the good in any pill if you couldn t 
 sell it? And what was the harm in any pill if 
 you could? It was just plain psychothera- 
 peutics ! 
 
 In spite of all he could say, however, the 
 advertising engineer was unable to make Gil- 
 fillan give up the brown pill. He left the office 
 of the Gilfillan Laboratories late that after 
 noon utterly disgusted at the biased, narrow- 
 minded, chemical point of view of the proprietor. 
 
 But if the cloud of Gilfillan s stupidity had 
 for the time being obscured the sunshine idea, 
 that idea was too cosmic to suffer permanent 
 eclipse. Turning the matter over in his mind 
 Brown began to see that it was really too big to 
 waste on pills. It wasn t only in pills that 
 people wanted sunshine. It wasn t only dys 
 peptics who yearned for sunshine in their lives. 
 The quest for sunshine was the one great hu-
 
 58 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 man quest. The instinct to seek sunshine was 
 second only to the instinct for self-preservation. 
 That was true whether you spoke of actual sun 
 shine or the sunshine of the spirit. Did not the 
 rays of the sun constitute a generally recognized 
 symbol for happiness? Were not people all 
 over the world continually in search of solar 
 warmth? Those who could afford to travel 
 sought it in Florida, California, Honolulu, 
 Bermuda, on the Riviera, in Sicily, or in Egypt. 
 Those who could not afford to travel sought 
 it in companionship, in entertainment, at the 
 theatre, at the movies, or in stories and poems. 
 Next to air and water, sunshine was the 
 element most necessary to life. The great 
 majority of human beings drudged through their 
 lives for money. And why for money? Because 
 to nine persons out of ten money is some 
 thing with which sunshine may be bought 
 with which a few hours of happiness may be 
 obtained. 
 
 The desire for sunshine made thieves. Also 
 it caused marriages. Why did men and women 
 wed if not in the hope of finding sunshine in 
 matrimonial life? And again, if marriage failed
 
 THE SUNSHINE IDEA 59 
 
 to bring sunshine, then, far from giving up the 
 quest, the disappointed mates would seek it in 
 divorce and remarriage. 
 
 "Why," he said to himself, suddenly, "the 
 sunshine idea is the biggest idea in the world ! 
 that is, it would be the biggest idea in the world 
 if you could merchandise it." 
 
 He considered other merchandising propo 
 sitions with which he was familiar. Take an 
 antiseptic gargle, like Boriol. The trouble with 
 an article of that kind was that the demand for 
 it was necessarily limited by the number of 
 persons needing a gargle. Moreover, though 
 there was a handsome margin of profit in each 
 bottle sold, nevertheless it cost a good deal to 
 make the stuff and put it up. Or take tooth 
 brushes. Or, again, take hooks and eyes. The 
 market for hooks and eyes was limited to women. 
 And whereas, in order to manufacture hooks 
 and eyes or toothbrushes or antiseptics or almost 
 any other kind of merchandisable goods, you 
 had to have a plant and labour and machinery 
 and raw material, you needed none of those 
 things in the sunshine business. Merchandise 
 sunshine and you d have practically no over-
 
 60 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 head. Sunshine was as free as air. The supply 
 was unlimited, and so was the demand. 
 
 "How much better," thought H. Bell Brown 
 in a kind of ecstasy, "to drop a sunbeam of 
 thought into the dark recesses of the human 
 mind than to drop a pill even a yellow pill 
 into those of the human stomach." 
 
 The epigram pleased him. He took a pencil 
 and wrote it down. It seemed to point the way 
 to something. With pencil and paper he now 
 began to try consciously for uplifting epigrams 
 and maxims, and presently, feeling the call more 
 and more strongly as he essayed these sunbeams 
 of thought, he found himself lapsing into verse.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 
 
 BELL BROWN was not one to burn 
 his bridges behind him without first 
 making certain of good going on the 
 farther shore. His initial experiments with 
 sunshine as a business proposition began in a 
 modest way and were conducted privately and 
 strictly on the side. Having compiled a number 
 of verses and maxims laden with cheer, he took 
 them to a friend of his who was in the business 
 of supplying "boiler-plate" pages to several 
 hundred newspapers in small towns, and pro 
 posed to furnish enough verses and paragraphs 
 daily to fill a long double-column box. 
 
 The boiler-plate man liked Brown s initial 
 offerings and was much pleased to find that he 
 would contribute further material of the kind. 
 
 Arrangements were concluded without dif 
 ficulty, the understanding being that the box 
 should have the title "Gloom Chasers" as its 
 
 61
 
 62 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 standing head, and that Brown s name should 
 appear conspicuously thereunder. 
 
 However, not long after he had left his 
 friend s office Brown returned. 
 
 "On thinking it over," he said, "I believe 
 I ll use something in the nature of a nom de 
 plume with the daily sunbeams. Instead of 
 using my name, run them as * by Belwyn Brown 
 Belwyn with a y- " 
 
 This item, seemingly so trifling, is recorded 
 only because it marks the occasion upon which 
 came into being the fourth and final version of 
 Brown s name for it was as Belwyn Brown 
 that he ultimately came to regard himself, and 
 to be regarded by many thousands of others, 
 as a thoroughly successful man. Probably he 
 never realized that he had had four names. 
 Probably his thoughts never went back of the 
 days in which he had been H. Bell Brown. 
 Yet the fact remains that as a boy he had been 
 called "Harry." Thus it is doubly true of the 
 hero of this narrative that he made, as the say 
 ing is, a name for himself. 
 
 Yet though the first half of his fourth and final 
 name was at last satisfactory to him, he was
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 63 
 
 never in his innermost heart quite satisfied. 
 The name of Brown annoyed him. He would 
 have liked to change it to Browning, Brownell, or 
 Brownstone, and even thought at times of doing 
 so, but was deterred by a memory. It was not, 
 as might be supposed, a sentimental memory, 
 having to do with the preservation of his family 
 name, but the memory of a curious look that 
 lay in the eyes of the column conductor of the 
 Dispatch when the latter meeting him in a cafe 
 in the beginning of his period of opulence 
 repeatedly addressed him as " Brown wyn." 
 
 Belwyn Brown for so in future we shall call 
 him felt that he had reason for artistic pride in 
 the first of his Gloom Chasers to be sent out as 
 part of a boiler-plate page. It was what, unhesi 
 tatingly, he called a poem; and it ran as follows: 
 
 SMILE! 
 
 It s easy to stride where the road is wide 
 
 And the pavement is firm and fine; 
 It s easy to skip at a good stiff clip 
 
 When the road is a long white line; 
 It s jolly good fun down the hills to run 
 If there isn t a chance to fall; 
 
 BUT 
 
 A MAN S TRUE BLUE IF HE JUST PLUGS THROUGH 
 WHERE THERE ISN T A PATH AT ALL!
 
 64 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 It s easy to grin when the cash rolls in 
 
 And your life is a cloudless day; 
 It s easy to prance in the costliest dance 
 
 If the Fiddler s received his pay; 
 It s easy to sing till the rafters ring 
 If Joy is the Heart of the Song; 
 
 BUT 
 GIVE ME THE FELLOW THAT DOESN T SHOW 
 
 YELLOW 
 WHEN EVERYTHING S GONE DEAD WRONG! . 
 
 So, remember, Friends, until Cosmos ends, 
 
 Until Chaos shall rule supreme; 
 Until Day and Night take their last long flight 
 
 And the World is a shattered dream; 
 Remember! Your frown pulls the next man 
 
 down. 
 Lend a Hand! Make his life worth while! 
 
 GIVE 
 
 A BEAMING FACE TO THE HUMAN RACE! 
 FACE FATE WITH A BRAVE 
 
 SWEET 
 SMILE! 
 
 In the succeeding Gloom Chasers there was 
 sometimes verse, sometimes prose, sometimes 
 both. Brown s aim was to give the daily box 
 an appearance of variety, yet always to harp 
 on the theme of uplift of sunshine. 
 
 The more he thought upon this theme the
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 65 
 
 more facile he became in handling it. You 
 could hitch the sunshine idea to almost any 
 thing, he found. For example, this, which ap 
 peared among the first week s Gloom Chasers: 
 
 FREE EXCURSION A Determination to be 
 Cheerful is the only Ticket needed on the SUN 
 SHINE SPECIAL which leaves the Depot of Gloom 
 at any-old-time, daily, and with Old Man Smiles 
 for its Conductor, runs over the golden rails of the 
 Optimism & Good Cheer Short Line to the Union 
 Station of Success, at the corner of Joy St. and 
 Hope Ave., Contentment ville. 
 
 GET ABOARD, FRIEND! 
 
 This uplifting item was followed by some of 
 the pungent paragraphs Brown was finding it 
 daily more easy to dash off mere sunbeams 
 such as: 
 
 The GOOD SCOUT can always Spot a Reason 
 to be GLAD. 
 
 Every Day of Sunshine is a HOO-RAY for 
 HAPPINESS! 
 
 No Business is Busted when there s a SMILE left 
 in the Bank.
 
 66 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 Then a short "poem " : 
 
 Comrades, to-day let hate and quarrels end: 
 Forget all ancient grudges and pretend 
 That bores are bright, and every foe a friend. 
 
 Chaos of gloom I Futility of strife ! 
 
 March stoutly onward: smiles your drum and fife: 
 
 Your banner joy. Let sunshine rule your life ! 
 
 Old Man Smiles became an established 
 character; a regular contributor of Gloom 
 Chasers. He gave variety by expressing him 
 self in homely dialect, as, for instance: 
 
 OLD MAN SMILES SAYS: "Ef I was you, 
 neighbour, I d be more keerful about the comp ny 
 I kep . Ef Old Gus Gloom got to hangin around 
 MY house I d jest SWAT IM WITH A GRIN." 
 
 As the result of the publication of Smile! 
 first of the Gloom Chasers to appear in print 
 Belwyn Brown received seventeen letters from 
 persons who had read it in one newspaper or 
 another and wished to let the author know that 
 his poem for so they all called it had helped 
 them; and thenceforward as the other Gloom
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 67 
 
 Chasers appeared day after day more letters 
 kept coming. They came, of course, by a cir 
 cuitous route; for the readers always addressed 
 Brown in care of the newspaper in which they 
 had read the Gloom Chasers that pleased them, 
 and the letters were forwarded by the papers 
 to the boiler-plate man, and thence to Brown. 
 
 The letters not only confirmed him in his 
 psychology, establishing the sunshine idea as 
 something merchandisable beyond a doubt, 
 but they also showed him that various groups 
 of readers liked various grades of sunshine. 
 Women, for instance, he perceived, generally 
 preferred their sunshine double distilled and 
 served with several extra lumps of sugar; 
 whereas the men who wrote to him usually 
 appreciated a sunbeam which, as one corres 
 pondent put it, "burned pleasantly as it went 
 down." 
 
 Wherefore instead of drawing all his sunshine 
 from the same vat, as he had done at first, he 
 began to classify it, and to arrange his Gloom 
 Chasers in such a way as to meet different de 
 mands. 
 
 Each day he aimed to furnish at least one
 
 68 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 item containing punch, pep, or a kick for his 
 male readers; but to counterbalance this he also 
 endeavoured always to furnish something tender, 
 sweet, and helpful for those of the other sex. 
 Beyond these two classifications he discovered 
 two others: A group chiefly composed of men 
 but including some women, who liked what 
 they called virile stuff the term usually de 
 noting a paragraph or poem in which such words 
 as "hell," "damn," or "guts" occurred; and an 
 other group, containing more women than men, 
 that wrote him elaborate letters about their 
 intellects, their souls, and their cravings for big 
 thoughts. It was in an effort to supply the 
 demand created by this latter class of readers 
 that he wrote a Gloom Chaser called "Man, the 
 Master," which brought many letters from per 
 sons who claimed to understand what it meant. 
 It ran as follows: 
 
 I AM MAN! 
 
 I AM the CHILD of CHAOS; 
 
 I AM the COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS;
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 69 
 
 I AM VISION, VOICE, and VOLITION; 
 
 I AM Lord over HEAT and COLD; 
 
 I HAVE Conquered the WATER and the AIR; 
 
 OVER the Beasts of FIELD and FOREST I HOLD 
 SWAY 
 
 I AM the Ruler of GOD S GREAT OUTDOORS; 
 I KNOW the MUSIC OF THE SPHERES; 
 
 ALONE and UNAFRAID I Vibrate to the COSMIC 
 THRENODY; 
 
 I BELONG to the UNIVERSE 
 
 AND the UNIVERSE BELONGS TO ME; 
 
 I AM NOTHING and I AM EVERYTHING 
 
 HOW HAVE I RISEN TO MY HIGH ESTATE? 
 
 BY the POWER of MIND. 
 
 MIND is the MITIGATING FORCE; 
 
 THROUGH MIND the SUMPTUARY POWER of 
 MATTER is Dispelled;
 
 70 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 MIND is the OCEAN, EARTH, and AIR; 
 
 MIND is ETERNITY, and ETERNITY is MIND; 
 
 MIND makes MAN MASTER OF HIS SOUL. 
 
 AND SOUL makes MAN MASTER OF HIS FATE. 
 
 MAN is the BIGGEST THING MAN KNOWS; 
 
 ANDI- 
 
 I AM MAN THE MASTER! 
 
 Not only had the Gloom Chasers unques 
 tionably caught hold, but it was demonstrated 
 as the weeks passed that they possessed what 
 an advertising engineer terms cumulative value. 
 Headers in increasing numbers followed Belwyn 
 Brown s department and let the various news 
 papers know they liked it; the newspapers let 
 the boiler-plate man know, and the latter in his 
 enthusiasm attempted to sign Brown up for a 
 year s supply at a good rate of payment. And 
 that was when he learned to his profound regret 
 that Brown proposed to discontinue the depart 
 ment altogether at the end of the third month. 
 Nor could he be dissuaded.
 
 GLOOM CHASERS 71 
 
 So, like a transient star, the Gloom Chaser ap 
 peared, twinkled for a time in the firmament of 
 boiler-plate journalism, and vanished. Brown 
 had tried his experiment and he was satisfied. 
 The sunshine idea was workable commercially. 
 And just as the idea was too good to waste on 
 pills, so was it too good to waste on boiler plate. 
 Henceforth it must be applied in a larger way. 
 It must be consecrated to a nobler cause. It 
 must be directed to some definite great purpose. 
 In short, it must be made to earn a lot of money 
 for someone worthy of a lot of money. And 
 who, after all, was so worthy of a fortune coined 
 from sunshine as the discoverer of the sun 
 shine theory and the first practitioner of the 
 sunshine principle?
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 THE UPLIFT BUSINESS 
 
 IT MUST not be supposed that Belwyn 
 Brown expected wealth at once. He 
 estimated that two or three years would 
 be required to get the sunshine idea well started. 
 After stopping the Gloom Chasers he spent 
 his spare time for several months in concocting 
 poems and paragraphs which he did not publish 
 but laid away against the time when his new 
 venture should get upon its feet. Presently he 
 found it necessary to take a small office and 
 employ a stenographer to run it, but he still 
 regarded sunshine as a side line, giving to it 
 time only outside business hours and saying 
 nothing of it to his associates in The Publicity 
 Directors of the United States, Inc. Adver 
 tising Engineers. 
 
 The stenographer was at first occupied chiefly 
 with the making of a card system containing the 
 
 72
 
 THE UPLIFT BUSINESS 73 
 
 names and addresses of persons who had written 
 Brown about the Gloom Chasers, and those of 
 other persons catalogued in selected mailing 
 lists which Brown bought from agents whose 
 regular business it was to deal in names. One of 
 these was, for instance, a list of more than 
 fourteen thousand women who had written 
 to the manufacturers of a beauty cream asking 
 for a sample. For these names he paid a high 
 rate per thousand, both because the names were 
 fresh the list being less than six months old 
 and because he believed that women who were 
 worrying about their looks made particularly 
 likely customers for sunshine. Similarly he 
 bought a list of men and women who had 
 ordered by mail a set of books by an author 
 celebrated for uplift and optimism; also a list of 
 persons who had answered a physical-culture 
 advertisement headed: "Do You Get Up in 
 the Morning Feeling Groggy?"; and another 
 of individuals who had written to Prof. Felix 
 Schnell, Box 674-Z, Munsonville, Indiana, an 
 swering affirmatively his published query: 
 "Would You Like to Be a Success in Life?" 
 It is not the purpose of this narrative to trace
 
 74 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 in detail the course of the development of the 
 new business. Suffice it that within two years 
 time Brown found himself in somewhat the 
 position of a circus rider driving a pair of horses 
 with one foot resting on the back of each, and 
 that at precisely the strategic juncture the tal 
 ented performer removed his foot entirely 
 from the back of the older horse belonging to 
 Ledbetter and began to give undivided atten 
 tion to the one he owned himself namely: 
 Sunbeams, Inc. 
 
 He might have waited a little longer to make 
 the final shift had not the Federal authorities 
 shown signs of sudden interest in Ledbetter s 
 transactions in connection with the advertising 
 of stock in a goldless gold mine. Though 
 Brown himself had not handled this account 
 he was able to perceive a certain family resem 
 blance between it and that of the oilless oil-well 
 business, over the advertising of which he had 
 personally presided. 
 
 It seemed upon the whole an auspicious time 
 to make a change, and it occurred to him that 
 in doing so it might be well to write Ledbetter 
 an indignant letter of resignation, putting the
 
 THE UPLIFT BUSINESS 75 
 
 blame for the oil-well advertising squarely upon 
 him. This he did after having cashed his 
 final check for salary and commissions. And 
 though he was careful to keep a copy of the 
 letter, as things turned out he never needed it 
 the Federal authorities having for some unex 
 plained reason seemed more interested in goldless 
 gold than in oilless oil. 
 
 From the time Brown ceased to be an adver 
 tising engineer and became a wholesale vendor 
 of sunshine the new business grew with great ra 
 pidity. The theory on which he worked, stated 
 in its simplest form, was that of something 
 more than one hundred million persons in the 
 United States all were potential purchasers of 
 sunshine of one kind or another, at one price 
 or another; it being his particular concern to 
 convert as many as possible of these prospects 
 into actual buyers. The foundation of his 
 scheme was a monthly publication called The 
 Sunbeam, consisting of sixteen pages artistic 
 ally printed which is to say, printed on a very 
 inexpensive kind of thin wrapping paper. Its 
 contents were written by Belwyn Brown, save 
 in some instances when he complimented other
 
 76 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 writers by reprinting certain utterances of theirs 
 which he deemed worthy to be placed beside 
 his own. Thus, though Brown himself unques 
 tionably did most of the writing for The Sun 
 beam, he was to some extent assisted by Epic- 
 tetus, Marcus Aurelius, Elmer Phineas Lord, 
 Shakspere, Montaigne, Robert Louis Stevenson, 
 Benjamin Franklin, Phcebe Fairweather Vance, 
 John Bunyan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abigail 
 Wheeler Sweet, Cervantes, and Effie Eggleston 
 Fosdick, the Sweet Singer of Ashtabula. 
 
 The price of The Sunbeam was a dollar a year, 
 out of which Brown figured to make a profit of 
 at least fifty cents. When three years had 
 passed, one out of every 4,473 persons in the 
 United States was a subscriber, and the sub 
 scription list was jumping rapidly toward the 
 fifty-thousand mark. And even so, the little 
 magazine was not the department of Sun 
 beams, Inc., in which the largest margin of 
 profit was made. Besides Regular Subscribers 
 at one dollar there were Preferred Subscribers 
 at $2.50 a year, these receiving, besides the 
 magazine, twelve mottoes or poems by such 
 writers as Belwyn Brown, Shakspere, Emerson,
 
 THE UPLIFT BUSINESS 77 
 
 and Stevenson suitable for framing; and the 
 Annual Sunbeam Calendar, an elaborate-looking 
 thing illustrated with coloured copies of master 
 pieces of art and rendered beautiful to intellect 
 as well as eye by an appropriate sentiment 
 for each day. Special Preferred Subscribers, 
 at $5.00, received besides these articles the 
 Sunbeam Daily Date Pad including hand 
 some nickel stand for same and a beautiful 
 duotone engraving of Belwyn Brown, with his 
 finger resting poetically upon his temple, and 
 his autograph guaranteed genuine below. 
 Or for $7.50 one might become an Extra Pre 
 ferred Subscriber and secure, along with the 
 portrait of the master, a large cream-coloured 
 mat upon which Brown would inscribe a senti 
 ment, not to exceed fifty words in length, 
 selected from his works. Or, best of all, for 
 $10.00 one could become an Elite Subscriber, 
 receiving all the treasures mentioned above, 
 and in addition a choice between two volumes 
 of Belwyn Brown s poems, printed on heavy 
 handmade, deckle-edge paper, numbered, signed 
 by the author, and bound in "limp ooze," 
 suitable for carriage in the shopping bag or
 
 78 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 pocket. These two volumes were "Sunbeam 
 Songs," generally preferred by women, and 
 "Rimes for Roughnecks," attuned more to the 
 virile taste of hairy, hoarse-voiced males. 
 
 As the business expanded, subsidiary depart 
 ments were added: A Sunbeam Sickroom Ser 
 vice, a children s department, and a holiday- 
 card division. For the sick-room Brown issued 
 his daily "Capsules of Cheer" at one dollar a 
 week; for children he got out "Tender Tinklings 
 for Tiny Tots," while in the holiday-card section 
 a large trade with stationery dealers promised 
 to develop, aside from the direct mail-order 
 service. 
 
 By the time the European War broke out 
 Sunbeams, Inc., was occupying considerable 
 space for offices and the storage of its printed 
 matter, was employing a good deal of inexpen 
 sive office help, and was yielding an excellent 
 income to its proprietor and guiding spirit. 
 From the beginning of the war Brown pro 
 claimed vigorously with voice and pen his 
 belief in the doctrine "Business as usual"; 
 and as long as business did continue as usual he 
 had no particular objection to the war. When
 
 THE UPLIFT BUSINESS ?9 
 
 the United States went in he became a little bit 
 uneasy and shouted "Business as usual" louder 
 than before; and for a time it looked as though 
 "Business as usual" might become the national 
 policy. 
 
 But it did not. 
 
 Came the draft, the shortage in labour and 
 materials, greatly increased costs and heavy 
 taxes; and though one might have supposed 
 that the harrowing effect of war on people s 
 minds would make the Sunbeam market better 
 than ever, that did not prove to be the case. 
 
 Brown now began to be deeply interested in 
 the war. He believed in "force, force without 
 stint. * America could not send too many 
 soldiers to suit him. The thing to do was to 
 clean it up get it over with. If the war didn t 
 end pretty soon everybody would be broke ! 
 
 It became difficult to get sufficient paper 
 for his various requirements. Brown attempted 
 to convince a governmental body having juris 
 diction over paper distribution that the business 
 of disseminating sunbeams was now more than 
 ever an essential industry, but he could not get 
 the narrow-minded creatures to see it.
 
 80 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 And yet it must be said for Belwyn Brown 
 that throughout the period of confusion and 
 depression he took his own medicine. Even 
 when the financial return from Sunbeams, 
 Inc., was cut in half he gazed confidently into 
 the future, under a deep conviction that every 
 thing would be all right again once the war was 
 over. So though it now became necessary to 
 reduce the sunbeams service all along the line 
 he devoted much time to the preparation of new 
 sunbeam campaigns to be launched when the 
 normal trend of things should have been 
 resumed.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 SUNSHINE WINS THE WAR 
 
 IT WAS in the course of his planning for 
 post-bellum developments that Belwyn 
 Brown conceived the idea of going to 
 Europe. At home there was nothing to do but 
 struggle along under the handicaps of war. 
 He had enough sunbeams laid by to last a year. 
 The only work that regularly required atten 
 tion was the setting up, printing, and mailing 
 of The Sunbeam every month, and the routine 
 of filling such orders in other lines as could be 
 filled. His office manager, formerly a young 
 reporter on the Dispatch, could handle all this. 
 
 Europe, upon the other hand, began to 
 beckon Belwyn Brown. He and Europe had 
 never met each other. It seemed time that this 
 was remedied. It was always good for Sun 
 beams, Inc., to have its proprietor travel. 
 He made new contacts, gathered new ideas for 
 
 81
 
 82 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 sunbeams, brought in new subscriptions. And 
 now, in Europe, what a chance! More than 
 two million huskies in need of uplift and good 
 cheer! More than two million lads, most of 
 whom would be back in the United States after 
 a while, and every one of whom would then be 
 come a possible subscriber for one sort of sun 
 beam service or another. He could go over, 
 shoot sunbeams into them, earn their gratitude 
 and friendship, and thus line them up for the 
 future. For he had read enough about the war 
 to know that over there you could get at the 
 men in bunches at wholesale, as it were. 
 
 Think of millions of American boys living in a 
 foreign land amid cooties, rats, and mud ! Mud 
 meant rain, rain meant gloom. What, then, 
 was most vitally needed by our boys in France? 
 Sunshine ! Sunshine would win the war ! 
 
 Within two or three days of the time when 
 the thought first struck him he had manu 
 factured samples of a new line of wares, which 
 he called "Sunbeams For Sammies." These he 
 took to Washington, where he presently suc 
 ceeded in submitting them to the secretary to 
 an assistant secretary. This dignitary was so
 
 SUNSHINE WINS THE WAR 83 
 
 impressed with Brown s productions that he 
 immediately summoned his own third assistant 
 secretary, who was in charge of the Bureau of 
 Uplift. Some of Brown s samples were then 
 read aloud: 
 
 "SUNBEAM SAMMY SAYS: Take it from 
 me, Pard: There ain t no Ordnance Officer as kin 
 Measure the Muzzle Velocity of a Grin ! 
 
 "SMILE and make the Hun of Hardship cry, 
 KAMERAD! 
 
 "When everything looks dark without, 
 
 Amid the battle s din, 
 The darkest dugout s lighted 
 By the glamour of a Grin. 
 
 "Bomb the crossing of Peevish Ave. and Grouch 
 St. with a Blazing Burst of SUNSHINE. 
 
 " Lay down a Barrage of Smiles and see the Boche 
 of Bitterness beat it back over the No Man s Land 
 of Gloom. 
 
 "When Despair is pressing fiercest, 
 
 Comes Joy s Army down the miles, 
 With a thousand sunbeams glinting 
 From its bayonets of Smiles!"
 
 84 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 In the face of such art as this, what could the 
 secretary to an assistant secretary say? After 
 speaking to Brown solemnly about morale and 
 functioning and things like that, he authorized 
 him to sail forthwith to France, there to spill 
 sunbeams upon the American Expeditionary 
 Force. 
 
 "Get in a few raps at bad language and the 
 tobacco habit if you can," were his last words to 
 Brown as he departed. 
 
 Brown was in France six months. He never 
 learned just what the soldiers thought of him, 
 because even in the S. O. S. discipline was 
 strict. The men really behaved very well 
 when Brown spilled sunbeams on them 
 especially after someone warned him to stop 
 calling them Sammies. He talked to them by 
 the thousands. And then one day he heard 
 that the armistice had been signed. The war 
 was over. He had told them all along what 
 would end it. Over and over again he had 
 declared: "Sunshine Will Win the War." And 
 now this prophecy had come true. Sunshine 
 had won!
 
 SUNSHINE WINS THE WAR 80 
 
 The ship on which he came home was full 
 of generals and economists and colonels and 
 correspondents and majors and assistant sec 
 retaries of government departments and cap 
 tains and socialists and admirals and Y workers 
 and lieutenant-commanders and nurses and 
 lieutenants and Red Cross people and dough 
 boys. Brown did not spend any time with the 
 doughboys or other minor persons but con 
 sorted as much as possible with the more im 
 portant figures. 
 
 The more he conversed with them the more 
 he was amazed. For whereas in the past the 
 biggest man with whom he had a chance to 
 compare himself were merely successful New 
 York merchants and the like, he now perceived 
 that even when he stacked up against men who 
 were real world figures he still showed to good 
 advantage. It was just a matter of personality. 
 Lots of these men didn t have much personality. 
 There was one of them, for instance, to whom he 
 talked for two hours without finding out who 
 he was or what he had been doing in Europe. 
 He figured him as just some plain little business 
 man of no particular importance. Yet who
 
 86 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 should this very fellow turn out to be but one of 
 Hoover s chief assistants a big man a man 
 who knew all the kings and generals and states 
 men! Yet would you believe it? he never 
 said a word about any of it; and, worse still, 
 instead of mixing with other important men he 
 would go and spend hours talking with the 
 doughboys. This practice struck Brown as so 
 peculiar that he was impelled to speak of it. 
 
 "Would you mind telling me," he asked the 
 man one day, "why you associate with th* 
 doughboys so much?" 
 
 "Because they let me," the other answered. 
 
 "But you can associate with the most im 
 portant men on board if you want to." 
 
 The man stared. 
 
 "If you can show me anybody more import 
 ant than the doughboy not only on this ship 
 but in this world," he said, "I d like very much 
 to talk with him. Only I don t know of any 
 such person." 
 
 Brown had thought well of Hoover until 
 then, but from that time he doubted him. He 
 might know about food perhaps, but if he would 
 have for one of his chief assistants a man who
 
 SUNSHINE WINS THE WAR 87 
 
 talked such nonsense as that, why, then, there 
 must be something the matter with Hoover him 
 self, too. One thing was certain: He, Belwyn 
 Brown, could teach almost any one of these 
 eminent men a good deal about the art of get 
 ting themselves across. 
 
 In New York he saw that even the dough 
 boys were getting themselves across more than 
 the big men were. There were no committees 
 of welcome except for the doughboys. There 
 were parades by and for them. There was a 
 stucco arch for them to march through. Every 
 body else who had been to France was being 
 lost sight of. It was all wrong. The dough 
 boy was well enough in his way, of course, but 
 there were others who were not getting the 
 recognition they deserved. Himself, for in 
 stance. What sacrifices he had made for his 
 country! Had he not dropped his affairs, 
 risked the perils of the deep, and gone to France 
 to win the war with sunshine? And was he 
 to be forgotten now that he was back? Not if 
 he could help it. And having been an advertis 
 ing engineer he thought he could.
 
 CHAPTE.R EIGHT 
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 
 
 BELWYN BROWN was not the only 
 man of his era on the Dispatch to have 
 achieved success in a field outside of 
 journalism. Bolton, who left the paper shortly 
 after Brown, to become editor of Tittle-Tattte, 
 had later branched out for himself in a line of 
 business no less unusual than Brown s. Unlike 
 Brown, however, Bolton did not choose to figure 
 as master of his own affairs, but preferred to be 
 thought of as a salaried manager acting on be 
 half of an organization of eminent men and 
 women. This organization was called The 
 Pundits Club, and on its handsomely embossed 
 letterheads Bolton s name figured modestly 
 below a lot of other names. His title was cor 
 responding secretary, and he made it a point 
 generally to assume the modest mien of an 
 employee.
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 89 
 
 "I shall have to consult our board of gover 
 nors," he would say; or: "I shall have to ask 
 our president about that before giving you an 
 answer." 
 
 Yet as a matter of fact he did not have to con 
 sult anybody. He himself was The Pundits 
 Club. He owned and operated it. His bank 
 account was its bank account or, rather, its 
 was his. His officers were dummies men 
 who liked to speak in public, and who let their 
 names be used on the understanding that they 
 should have no work and no responsibility and 
 should be called upon to speak at a banquet 
 once a year for the liquor habit and the 
 tobacco habit are minor vices compared with the 
 public-speaking habit. 
 
 That suited Bolton. He was the Membership 
 Committee, the Dinner Committee, the Com 
 mittee on Speakers. The work and the respon 
 sibility were his. Also his were the profits. 
 And given some knowledge of the inner ma 
 chinery of The Pundits Club the profits were 
 easy to compute. Eight or ten banquets were 
 given each year, beginning in the fall and end 
 ing in the early spring. A ticket to one of the
 
 90 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 banquets cost six dollars. The actual cost of 
 the banquet to Bolton was approximately half 
 that amount. The difference made his income. 
 Altogether, you see, it was a nice clean busi 
 ness, easy to handle, and Bolton had his law 
 yer s word for it entirely within the law. 
 
 Don t imagine that anybody could buy a 
 ticket to a Pundits banquet. No, indeed ! To 
 buy a ticket you had to be a member. And to 
 become a member you had to be invited. Oh, 
 yes; The Pundits was exclusive very. But 
 there was nothing commercial about it no 
 initiation fee or dues; the object as stated in the 
 club s prospectus was simply to get together a 
 body of congenial people who liked to dine out 
 and hear interesting speakers. 
 
 A great many people in New York like to dine 
 out and hear interesting speakers. Most of 
 them live in family hotels. Suppose yourself 
 one of these. You receive some fine morning 
 an impressive document. At the head of it arc 
 the names of the officers of The Pundits Club. 
 Many of these names are vaguely familiar. Be 
 low is an engraved invitation. Your name is 
 written in. The corresponding secretary of
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 91 
 
 The "Pundits Club begs to inform you that By 
 order of the Board of Governors you are invited 
 to become a member. You are flattered. 
 How did they come to invite you? Evidently 
 some member of the Board of Governors has 
 found out that you are a person who likes to 
 keep up with current affairs. You ve often 
 read in the newspapers about the banquets 
 of The Pundits. They have important speak 
 ers celebrities. You like to see and hear ce 
 lebrities. Moreover, you get awfully tired of 
 meals from your hotel kitchen. You write to 
 the corresponding secretary and accept the 
 invitation. 
 
 Thenceforth you are a Pundit and receive 
 a notice of each banquet. Nor does it ever 
 occur to you that in joining this distinguished 
 body you are performing an act about equiva 
 lent to buying a theatre seat or subscribing for 
 a magazine. No. This seems altogether dif 
 ferent. This is a club. You are a member. 
 You can go to the banquets, and when you 
 read about them in your newspaper next morn 
 ing you can say to yourself proudly, "I was 
 there!" When you read what some speaker
 
 92 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 said you can say to yourself: "I heard him 
 say that or at least I should have heard him 
 had I only sat a little nearer to the speakers 
 table." 
 
 There is always the chance, too, that some 
 thing still more wonderful may happen. Now 
 and then there appears in some newspaper a 
 list of some of the persons who were present. 
 Some day your name may appear on such a 
 list. Think of that! You can buy a lot of 
 copies of the paper, mark them, and send them 
 to friends in remote places to show them that 
 you re somebody in New York now. The 
 hotel clerk and the chambermaid will be in 
 terested, too. 
 
 Of the men on the Dispatch in Belwyn 
 Brown s time Bolton was the only one of whom 
 the proprietor of Sunbeams, Inc., had kept 
 track. Four or five times a year the two would 
 meet, lunch or dine together and discuss their 
 respective affairs. Thus Brown not only watch 
 ed the growth of The Pundits Club, but acted 
 occasionally as an adviser to his friend. To 
 advise he had to understand the inner workings 
 of the club, and he was one of the very few per-
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 03 
 
 sons who did. As he watched Bolton s prog 
 ress his respect for Bolton grew. In the early 
 days the corresponding secretary had been 
 glad enough to get a prominent actor or actress 
 as a guest of honour, filling in his list of speak 
 ers with judges of the state courts, and lawyers 
 and politicians whose reputations were distinctly 
 local ; but now that the club was in full swing no 
 one was too big to be a guest of honour at its 
 banquets, nor was there in the city any ban 
 quet hall too big for the crowds that Bolton could 
 cause to gather at six dollars a plate. 
 
 He had by this time entertained visiting 
 princes and other persons of the higher Euro 
 pean aristocracy, ambassadors, cabinet mem 
 bers and leading senators from Washington, 
 opera singers and musicians of the first rank, 
 generals, admirals, explorers, great inventors, 
 authors of the highest distinction and the presi 
 dents of gigantic corporations. It had come 
 to be understood that there were always many 
 interesting people at these banquets; and even 
 interesting people themselves will go to ban 
 quets sometimes to meet other interesting 
 people. It was all plain sailing for Bolton now.
 
 94 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 Soon after his return from Europe Belwyn 
 Brown invited Bolton to lunch. Neither one 
 of them could have told, now, whether Rafaelli s 
 so much as existed any more, and even Sulli 
 van s had sunk in their opinion to the rank of an 
 obscure second-rate restaurant. They lunched 
 at a great hotel on Fifth Avenue, and as they 
 entered the dining room the head waiter bowed 
 and called them by their names. 
 
 Until now Brown had not thought in a long 
 time of the farewell banquet given him years 
 before upon the occasion of his leaving the staff 
 of the Dispatch. He could not have told you 
 what had become of the absurdly small loving 
 cup of thin silver presented to him then. Long 
 ago he had put that cup away upon a dark, 
 dusty closet shelf, corresponding with the shelf 
 of memory upon which the recollection of the 
 dinner itself had been placed. 
 
 Yet now, in a curious way, his mind harked 
 back to that dinner and that cup. For they 
 had done him good. Insignificant as they were 
 they had helped him. They had given him his 
 first publicity and had assisted him materially 
 in his new job. It was an excellent thing for a
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 95 
 
 man to have a banquet given in his honour and 
 to receive a loving cup. And the larger the ban 
 quet and the cup, the better. Strange that 
 Bolton should have been the moving genius in 
 that affair of long ago! For it was Brown s 
 intention now to let Bolton do the same thing 
 for him again; the same thing yet, paradoxi 
 cally, not the same thing at all. 
 
 After telling Bolton something of his work in 
 France, and assuring him that sunbeams had 
 been the decisive factor in the war, he spoke 
 reminiscently of the old days. 
 
 "Last night," he said, "I got to thinking 
 about that banquet you gave for me when I left 
 the Dispatch. Some fellows forget things like 
 that, but I don t. I suppose it s sentimentality 
 in me, but I ve always felt that memory as a 
 tie between us." 
 
 "You ve forgotten," Bolton put in. "I 
 didn t get up that banquet. It was Jimmy 
 Otis." 
 
 Brown brushed Jimmy Otis aside with a wave 
 of the hand. "He may have thought of it," 
 he said, "but it took you to carry it out. That 
 was the first time any of us realized your
 
 96 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 genius for handling such things. I guess perhaps 
 it was the first time you realized it yourself." 
 
 "I was a bit surprised at myself," Bolton 
 said. "I wouldn t call it genius, though." 
 
 "Cut out the false modesty, old man," said 
 Brown, patting his friend on the shoulder. 
 "It is genius. Nobody else in New York can 
 pull off a big dinner the way you can. Well, 
 then, admit it. Admit it the same as I admit 
 it when I ve really accomplished something 
 big." 
 
 Bolton looked at him and waited. 
 
 "That brings me to what I want to talk to 
 you about," Brown went on. "The fact is, 
 Bolton, a lot of the men who have done big 
 things in this war are going to get lost in the 
 shuffle, when it comes to passing around the 
 credit, unless they get busy and see that they 
 get what s coming to them. Take my own 
 case: I deserve recognition, but who s going to 
 know it if I sit tight and say nothing? That 
 would be the easy thing to do, but is it the right 
 thing to do? No. It isn t fair to the public or 
 to me. The people of this country have a right 
 to know what a force the sunshine idea was.
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 97 
 
 Of course there are lots of ways that it can be 
 got over to them but, as I said before, I m 
 sentimental. You gave me that first banquet 
 and loving cup, years ago, when I was starting. 
 Our friendship has gone on ever since. I al 
 ways knew you d make good, and you have 
 made good. I ve been able to advise with you 
 to help you a little, I trust. And you ve 
 watched my progress. Well, you gave me that 
 little testimonial banquet, so now, when I ve 
 really got something to deliver, I want you to be 
 the one to give me a big banquet. Naturally 
 there are many organizations that would be 
 glad to do it, just to hear what I ve got to say 
 about sunshine and the war, but I want you to 
 do it, for auld lang syne. I want The Pundits 
 to do it. I want 
 
 "It s getting pretty late in the season," 
 Bolton said. "We were going to have only one 
 more dinner, and for that we were going to have 
 the Duke of Felixstowe and the Secretary 
 of- 
 
 " That s all right," Brown said. "Let them 
 speak at my dinner. So much the better. I 
 want other big men there anyhow. Of course
 
 98 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 I realize that their names would draw more 
 than mine, even if I had done a lot more than 
 they had. That s just the point. I ve kept in 
 the background too much, old man. I don t 
 care who else speaks as long as I m the guest 
 of honour. There ll be glory enough for all." 
 
 Bolton showed no enthusiasm. 
 
 "You must remember, Brown," he said, 
 "that with The Pundits everything is strictly 
 business. You know how it has been built up. 
 It wouldn t be anything if we gave dinners to 
 people who to people who, whatever their 
 merits, weren t known all over the world." 
 
 "But you don t realize what I did in France." 
 
 "I haven t any doubt that you did wonders," 
 Bolton said. "That s not the point, old man. 
 The question is: Do members of The Pundits 
 realize it? Will they come? " 
 
 "We ll make them realize it!" Brown de 
 clared. "And as far as their coming is con 
 cerned why, of course they ll do that if you 
 line up the usual lot of celebrities. That s just 
 the point." 
 
 "These banquets aren t nearly so profitable 
 as they used to be," Bolton said, ruefully.
 
 THE PUNDITS CLUB 99 
 
 " Food prices have jumped so that I can t make 
 favourable arrangements with the hotels any 
 more. Of course I have to give The Pundits a 
 fairly decent meal. But where I used to be 
 able to knock out from two-eighty to three- 
 twenty a plate for myself, I m lucky now if I 
 clear a dollar and a half, after the printing, 
 souvenirs, and dinners for invited guests are 
 settled for." 
 
 "As far as that goes," said Brown, quickly, 
 "I ll be glad to pay for all the extras myself." 
 
 "That puts a different face on it," replied 
 Bolton, warming perceptibly. "After all, this 
 club is my living, you know." 
 
 "Of course. What do you think the extras 
 will come to?" 
 
 "Five hundred ought to cover everything." 
 
 "Including a loving cup?" 
 
 "No. Just the fixed charges. Do you want 
 a cup, too?" 
 
 "Yes," said Brown. "I ll arrange about that 
 myself, though. But I do think a big handsome 
 cup inscribed from The Pundits Club to me 
 would be rather effective, don t you? " 
 
 Bolton thought it would.
 
 100 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "Then," said Brown, as they left the table, 
 "we may regard the whole thing as settled. 
 Where do you think you ll hold it? " 
 
 Bolton mentioned the grand ballroom of an 
 immense hotel. 
 
 "Now that we ve fixed the business end of 
 it," he said, genially, "I want you to know that 
 I ll try to make this the greatest banquet The 
 Pundits ever gave. It will be the biggest affair 
 of the season if I can make it so." 
 
 "Thanks!" exclaimed Brown with fervour 
 as he wrung the other s hand. "Thanks more 
 than I can say, old man ! No one knows better 
 than I what you can accomplish when you 
 want to."
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 A BIG BANQUET 
 
 THE very invitations to the banquet 
 given by The Pundits Club in honour 
 of Belwyn Brown foreshadowed a su 
 preme event. Brown wished them to do that, 
 and as he paid for them himself there was no 
 stinting. They were enormous invitations, 
 in enormous envelopes, on enormously thick 
 paper from which the engraving protruded in 
 relief so high as immediately to tempt explor 
 ing thumbs. The large script lettering was uni 
 form in size save for two lines displayed in 
 even taller characters these setting forth re 
 spectively the name of the club and that of the 
 guest of honour. 
 
 On the second sheet were forty famous 
 names making up an invitation committee; 
 and a separate card inclosed with each invita 
 tion gave a list of those who would speak. As 
 
 101
 
 102 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 guest of honour Belwyn Brown s name nat 
 urally headed this list. Next came His Grace 
 the Duke of Felixstowe, K. G., next a member 
 of the cabinet, then one of the world s most 
 celebrated soldiers, then a great economist, 
 and last a famous explorer. 
 
 Never had The Pundits Club presented such 
 a programme. Ten days before the banquet 
 was to take place all the tickets were disposed 
 of, and a hundred or two Pundits who applied 
 too late had their checks returned to them. 
 
 A good many of The Pundits, receiving these 
 invitations, wondered who Belwyn Brown was. 
 Someone of great consequence, of course. 
 That went without saying. Otherwise The 
 Pundits would not be giving him a banquet. 
 Besides, look at the list of speakers that he 
 headed, and at the distinguished names on the 
 invitation committee. The accumulated evi 
 dence of Belwyn Brown s importance caused 
 many a Pundit to feel ashamed of knowing noth 
 ing of him, and to fear to reveal the ignorance 
 by making inquiries. 
 
 Came at last the night of the great banquet. 
 Came the rank and file of male and female
 
 A BIG BANQUET 103 
 
 Pundits, filling the places at the countless round 
 tables crowding the ballroom floor; came the 
 more exalted Pundits those who allowed their 
 names to be used upon the club s letterhead 
 to occupy the places at the long table on the 
 dais at one end of the vast rococo chamber; 
 came the wives and daughters of these, in jewels 
 and silks, to fill the double tier of gilded boxes 
 surrounding three sides of the room; came the 
 reporters, who were the only people not in 
 evening dress, and the only people, save the 
 speakers, to get in free; came the corresponding 
 secretary of The Pundits Club, to act, this time, 
 as toastmaster; came the five famous speakers 
 with their speeches rumbling in their heads; 
 came the guest of honour. 
 
 He came a little early in a limousine. That, 
 he felt, was the way a man ought to arrive at a 
 banquet given in his honour alone in a lim 
 ousine. The gold-braided carriage starter 
 opened the door of the car and Brown alighted. 
 He paused and drew from his well-filled wallet a 
 dollar bill which he gave to the chauffeur as a 
 tip. The limousine itself was charged to his 
 account. He ascended in a crowded elevator
 
 104 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 to the banquet floor. The other people in the 
 elevator got out at that floor, too. Though 
 none of them knew him they were going to his 
 banquet. He could imagine how they would 
 have whispered had they known who he was. 
 "That s Belwyn Brown!" they would have said 
 behind their hands. 
 
 "It s all for me!" he thought as he passed 
 through the mob of Pundits in the corridors, 
 to leave his silk hat and his fur-lined overcoat 
 in the special room provided for those at the 
 speakers table. "It s all for me!" he thought 
 as he entered the vast ballroom and saw the 
 great flags draped behind the long, elevated 
 table at the exact centre of which he was to sit. 
 "It s all for me!" he thought as he stepped up 
 to his place and shook the hand of Bolton. 
 "It s all for me!" he kept saying to himself as 
 Bolton escorted him down the line of celebrities, 
 introducing them to him one after another. 
 "It s all for me!" he reflected, warmly, as he 
 dropped into the chair at Bolton s right and 
 with an exaltation of the spirit such as he had 
 never before felt, surveyed the huge, crowded, 
 glittering room.
 
 A BIG BANQUET 105 
 
 People at the tables stared up at the speakers, 
 indicating to one another the distinguished 
 guests. Brown was conscious of their glances 
 when they rested upon him. They were talking 
 about him. 
 
 "That must be Belwyn Brown," they were 
 saying "Belwyn Brown himself!" 
 
 He knew how they felt. At many another 
 banquet he had sat where they were sitting 
 at the ordinary tables. He had looked up, 
 as they were looking, to admire and envy the 
 important figures. It had often struck him 
 that men at speakers tables looked calmer, 
 more genial, and more worldly than men ever 
 looked in other places, and that as they leaned 
 back and conversed with one another their 
 shirt bosoms seemed whiter and more spacious 
 than those of other men. Did he look now as 
 guests of honour looked at other dinners? Did 
 his shirt bosom have that special splendour? 
 He hoped so. And he believed so. For what 
 a haberdasher, a tailor, and a Belwyn Brown 
 could do in combination these things had as 
 suredly been done. 
 
 Full dress ! How he loved to see people in full
 
 106 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 dress! And all for him! This festival indeed 
 presented a picture of brilliant dignity such as 
 may be attained only where lustrous shirt 
 bosoms and silken facings garnish the banquet 
 board. To be sure Brown did see a few men 
 wearing dinner jackets or, as some people 
 called them, tuxedos. His sense of propriety 
 was somewhat jarred by the spectacle. Didn t 
 they know that dinner jackets were correct 
 only at gatherings attended solely by men 
 informal gatherings? He took his own coat 
 by the lapels and adjusted the set of it. 
 
 "The thing to do," he reflected, comfortably, 
 "is always to be dressed correctly for the 
 occasion, regardless of what others may wear. " 
 For years this had been his philosophy of 
 dress. He had practised it so long that he had 
 forgotten how and when he first developed it. 
 
 The head waiter the head of all the head 
 waiters stood directly behind Brown s chair 
 and with his own hands poured his cocktail. 
 It struck Brown as a very smooth cocktail in 
 deed, having been made, of course, by an expert, 
 and of the best materials. 
 
 "You re certainly doing this thing up in great
 
 A BIG BANQUET 107 
 
 shape," he said, turning to Bolton. "You ve 
 got a mighty good head on you, old man. By 
 the way the loving cup got here all right, 
 didn t it? They promised to deliver it at six, 
 sharp." 
 
 "Yes," Bolton replied, "I have it right here 
 under the table. I haven t opened the case, 
 but from the size and weight it ought to be 
 quite a nice cup." 
 
 "Of course it is," Brown answered. "Didn t 
 I pick it out? There s nothing ornate about it. 
 It s just a simple colonial design. But it s 
 some cup ! With the marking it cost a hundred 
 and eighty dollars." 
 
 Though, as has been said, there were many 
 Pundits who feared to display ignorance by 
 asking who Belwyn Brown was, it must not be 
 supposed that no one at the banquet asked the 
 question. 
 
 For example, a young lady who had just 
 arrived from the South to visit friends who 
 were Pundits of the more exalted class felt, 
 quite reasonably, that as a stranger she could 
 not be expected to know all of New York s 
 celebrities.
 
 108 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "Who is Belwyn Brown?" she demanded of 
 her hostess. 
 
 At this the other people at the table stopped 
 eating and listened. 
 
 "He s a prominent man, dear," replied the 
 young lady s hostess, uneasily. " That s about all 
 I remember at the moment. I can t think exactly 
 what he s done. He s prominent, though. All 
 the men at the speakers table are prominent. * 
 
 Thus, also, the Duke of Felixstowe, but one 
 place removed from the guest of honour, felt 
 himself for a like reason entitled to inquire. 
 
 "Will you be so good," he said, addressing a 
 distinguished financier at his side, "as to tell me 
 for precisely what achievement or achievements 
 Mr. Belwyn Brown is so widely known? " 
 
 The financier became suddenly embarrassed. 
 
 "As a matter of fact, sir," he replied, "I 
 must confess that I am not quite clear upon 
 that point myself." 
 
 "Oh," said the duke, "I beg your pardon. 
 I was under the impression that you were a 
 member of the invitation committee." 
 
 "So I am," the other answered. "I allowed 
 my name to be used at the urgent request of Mr.
 
 A BIG BANQUET 109 
 
 Bolton, the club s corresponding secretary, a 
 thoroughly able and responsible young man. 
 Moreover, a great many of my friends, men of 
 the highest position, were already on the com 
 mittee." 
 
 "Ah, yes," returned the duke, vaguely. 
 "Ah, yes. Quite so." 
 
 Then his thoughts returned to his speech, 
 the subject of which was "Blood Is Thicker 
 Than Water." 
 
 Inquiries concerning Brown voiced at the 
 reporters table were of course couched in more 
 brazen terms. Distinguished individuals im 
 press New York reporters no more than large 
 buttons impress tailors. 
 
 "Who is this bird, Belwyn Brown, anyhow?" 
 asked a very young reporter who was attending 
 his first Pundits banquet. 
 
 "You got his name wrong, son," replied a 
 veteran. "It s Bullwyn Brown. That s why 
 they feed him in the Grand Bull Room." 
 
 "Is that so?" retorted the neophyte with 
 an air of cold sophistication. "Well, since 
 you re such an encyclopedia, who s the solemn- 
 looking blond guy next to the general? "
 
 110 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "He s the great explorer," returned the vet 
 eran, mentioning a celebrated name. "Even 
 you ought to know him." 
 
 "Is that so? " repeated the young reporter, 
 neither impressed nor crushed. "Maybe he s 
 the guy that discovered this Belwyn Brown?" 
 
 "No," returned the other, gravely. "You re- 
 wrong about that, too. Brown discovered him 
 self." 
 
 "Brown didn t need such a deuce of a lot of 
 discovering," put in a short, pleasant-looking, 
 middle-aged man who was smoking a cheap 
 cigarette of his own in preference apparently 
 to the more fragrant and expensive ones pro 
 vided by The Pundits Club. " He has ability- 
 plenty of it." 
 
 The others listened with respect. 
 
 "Do you know him, Mr. Otis?" asked the 
 young reporter. 
 
 "Sure," replied Jimmy Otis. "He was once 
 our star reporter on the Dispatch. Even then 
 we could see where he was headed. He s a 
 brilliant fellow; and a mighty nice fellow, too." 
 
 "How do you come to be sitting at our table, 
 Jimmy?" inquired another of the older men.
 
 A BIG BANQUET 111 
 
 "Assistant managing editors usually wear white 
 shirt fronts and sit out among the animals." 
 
 "Oh," returned Otis, "I always liked Brown. 
 When the notice of this banquet came into the 
 office I got to thinking about old times how 
 we gave him a little farewell dinner when he was 
 leaving the paper. Bolton was with us then. 
 He was toastmaster at that dinner, too. So I 
 just thought to myself: Instead of sending 
 one of the boys I ll cover it myself. 
 
 "That ought to tickle The Pundits all right," 
 said the other. "Nobody s going to cut your 
 copy and The Pundits don t exactly shrink 
 from publicity."
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 A LOVING CUP 
 
 TO THE mind of Belwyn Brown, also, there 
 came, this evening, recollections of that 
 other time, long ago, when he had been 
 a guest of honour seated upon Bolton s right. 
 Fascinating it was to reflect upon the difference 
 between that dinner and this. He nursed the 
 ancient memory now, as Napoleon in the mo 
 ment of placing an emperor s crown upon his 
 own head may have nursed the memory of 
 ragged days in Corsica, delighting in the 
 allegory created by the contrast. 
 
 And what a contrast it was! From the ri 
 diculous to the sublime from the tawdry to the 
 sumptuous from the small and cheap to the 
 vast and costly. Nobody had ever had a ban 
 quet given in his honour anywhere at which 
 there were more people. There wasn t any 
 banquet hall in the world in which more people 
 
 112
 
 A LOVING CUP 113 
 
 could be seated. The President of the United 
 States couldn t have a bigger banquet. There 
 wasn t any way to give a bigger one. It simply 
 couldn t be done. 
 
 While the duke was talking about the things 
 he had come all the way from England to talk 
 about, and again while the cabinet member 
 was haranguing about the things he had come 
 all the way from Washington to harangue about, 
 Belwyn Brown gazed now at the glints of light 
 reflected in a wineglass which he twirled be 
 tween his thumb and forefinger, now at the 
 great assemblage, and felt himself in an ecstatic 
 waking dream. 
 
 Even when Bolton in his capacity as toast- 
 master came up for the third time, so to speak, 
 and began a very fulsome but not very specific 
 eulogy which clearly indicated that the guest of 
 honour was about to be called upon, Brown did 
 not come fully back to earth. Nor yet, even 
 when at the proper time he found himself stand 
 ing, facing the applauding multitude, beginning 
 to utter the speech he had so painstakingly 
 memorized not even then did he feel so much 
 like a man looking down from the speakers
 
 114 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 table at a banquet as like Jupiter looking down 
 from Olympus upon a vast and shimmering 
 world. 
 
 He told them something of the sunbeam 
 idea; he quoted sunbeams at them; he revealed 
 to them how he had taken sunbeams to the 
 doughboys abroad; he pictured our soldiers 
 weary and despondent in the rain and mud of 
 France, and then, lo a burst of sunbeams! 
 They smiled. And when he saw their smiles, 
 he said, he knew the war could end in but one 
 way. He told how the doughboys dashed 
 against the foe; how the war was won, just as he 
 had known it would be. 
 
 Then he had felt free to come home again. 
 And if perhaps in deference to the presence 
 of the general, who had fought for a long time 
 in France, yet had never before heard of sun 
 beams of the Belwyn Brown variety the 
 speaker did not definitely declare that sun 
 beams won the war, nevertheless he left with 
 many of his auditors a distinct impression 
 that such was undoubtedly the case. 
 
 When the applause following Brown s speech 
 had subsided, Bolton got up again and presented
 
 A LOVING CUP 115 
 
 the loving cup, declaring with every appear 
 ance of profound gravity that it was given by 
 The Pundits Club in token of admiration and 
 esteem for Belwyn Brown. 
 
 Brown rose, took the great vessel in two hands, 
 and looked at the inscription. It was a rather 
 long inscription. The engraver had told him to 
 string it out all he could, as there was such a big 
 space to fill. It looked very neat. The cup 
 felt fine and heavy, too, when you lifted it. 
 He set it down in front of him and looked out at 
 his audience. 
 
 The room was hushed. People were waiting 
 for him to speak. It all seemed very wonderful. 
 An emotion stronger even than his earlier emo 
 tions took possession of him. Never before in 
 his life had he felt so deeply moved. In plan 
 ning his remarks he had thought to begin with the 
 customary, formal: "Mister Toastmaster and 
 ladies and gentlemen"; but now, what with the 
 splendour of the cup and the impressive silence 
 of that vast, crowded room, he felt that formal 
 words would seem a little out of place. 
 
 The note for him to strike was that of fullness 
 of the heart.
 
 116 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 "Friends," he began, brokenly "friends, I 
 am too stunned to thank you as I wish I could 
 thank you for this handsome and unexpected 
 token of your regard. I can only say that it 
 means more to me than" there came a catch 
 in his voice; he took hold of the cup and looked 
 down into it "that it means more to me than 
 any other possession I have or ever shall 
 have. Friends, I I am too overcome to say 
 more." 
 
 Somehow, as he spoke, it all seemed true. He 
 did feel overcome. He was all choked up. 
 Thus it came about that as he looked down at 
 the trophy two large tears dropped into it 
 christening it, as it were. The cup was more 
 than wide enough to catch them both. 
 
 To Belwyn Brown the remainder of the even 
 ing was merely a vague, gorgeous space of time. 
 The general spoke, the economist spoke, the ex 
 plorer spoke. But Brown did not hear any 
 thing they said. And the applause that followed 
 their speeches was to him only an echo of tke 
 applause that had followed his own. 
 
 Then a great noise of chairs being pushed
 
 A LOVING CUP 11T 
 
 back and a buzz of general conversation as 
 The Pundits rose to go. The banquet was over. 
 The multitude pressed out of the ballroom as 
 people press out of a crowded train that has 
 reached the end of the line. The men at the 
 speakers table gave one another perfunctory 
 good-nights and hurried away. Bolton alone 
 waited for Brown. Together they walked to 
 the coat room reserved for honoured guests. 
 "Well," said Bolton, "we put it over." 
 "It was indeed a great occasion!" replied the 
 exalted Belwyn Brown. 
 
 Among the first to leave the banquet hall was 
 Jimmy Otis. Jimmy lived in Flatbush in a 
 substantial frame house set back from the street 
 in the midst of its own little lawn. He owned 
 it. The payments on it had been completed 
 several years before. There also resided Mrs. 
 Jimmy, the children, the small but reliable auto 
 mobile, the dog, and the canary. And there 
 resided happiness. Jimmy never saw that 
 house without thinking what a lucky devil he 
 was to have such blessings. It seemed to him 
 that in this world some men got more than was
 
 118 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 really coining to them, and that he was one of 
 them. 
 
 All through the banquet he had thought, a 
 little ruefully, of the home dinner he had missed. 
 For he was anything but a banquet sort of 
 person. And though he was glad to have wit 
 nessed Brown s triumphant evening his one 
 desire now was to get home. 
 
 Downstairs, as he was about to head for the 
 Subway, he paused. After all, it would be nice to 
 wait and speak to old Brown. He d be coming 
 down any minute; and it would no doubt 
 gratify him to know that his old friends were 
 proud of his success. Otis lit one of his 
 abominable cigarettes and waited in the hotel 
 lobby for Brown to descend. 
 
 And Brown was descending. A hotel atten 
 dant in uniform, bearing the cup in its imposing 
 case, had followed him to the coat room. There 
 Brown had said good-night to Bolton, and with 
 his cupbearer had proceeded to the elevator. 
 The elevator was full of male and female 
 Pundits full of white shirt bosoms, silk hats, 
 furs, jewels, brocades, and heady perfumes. 
 None of The Pundits spoke to Brown. But
 
 A LOVING CUP 119 
 
 now they knew who he was. They looked at 
 him and at the cup case, and whispered behind 
 their hands. 
 
 It was a large elevator, and as he stepped 
 out of it at the lobby floor it seemed to him 
 that all these other people made a sort of lane 
 through which he walked with his cupbearer 
 behind him, as an emperor might walk between 
 two rows of brilliantly dressed courtiers. 
 Though he had entered almost like an ordinary 
 person his exit was to be majestic. 
 
 But suddenly, as he was nearing the door, he 
 saw a man approaching with the evident inten 
 tion of speaking to him. Though Brown had 
 not seen this individual in a long time he knew 
 at once who he was. It was a man named Otis, 
 who used to be a reporter on the Dispatch. He 
 was not in evening dress. He wore a slouch 
 hat, and a cheap cigarette dangled from one 
 corner of his mouth. He came up smiling, with 
 his hand extended in greeting. 
 
 "Good old Brownie! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Brown swung sharply away from him and 
 entered the revolving door. 
 
 Outside the limousine was waiting. The
 
 120 SUNBEAMS, INC. 
 
 boy handed the cup to the carriage starter, and 
 the carriage starter in obedience to a gesture 
 placed it upon the deeply cushioned seat beside 
 its owner. 
 
 As he drove off Brown threw an arm affec 
 tionately, protectively, across the case, and 
 indulged himself in a brief self-gratulatory yet 
 philosophical reflection. 
 
 "One thing is sure," he said to himself: "In 
 this world a fellow gets just about what s 
 coming to him." 
 
 THE END
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 
 
 FEB 1 1
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL UBRARYFAa ITY 
 
 A 000073196 8 
 
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 Washington, D. C.
 
 Universit 
 
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