diate hopes, "_I Dreamt I Was Caught Dead
Without My Virginform Casket!_"

Newspapers, magazines and every other medium added to the assault,
never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign, for sheer
concentration, that had ever battered at the public mind. The public
reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to
buy.

Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store
managers who had, grudgingly and under strong sales pressure, made
space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now
rushed to the telephones like touts with a direct pronouncement from a
horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the act. Grocery
supermarkets put in casket departments. The Association of
Pharmaceutical Retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority,
tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service
stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying
caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads
and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and
whatever else could haul a coffin. The Stock Market went completely
mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was
called into session early. The President got authority to ration
lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation-short supply. State
laws were passed against cremation, under heavy lobby pressure. A new
racket, called boxjacking, blossomed overnight.

The Advertising Manager who had put the thing over had been fighting
with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant
managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in
a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping,
but by Wednesday after Thanksgiving they, along with the original one,
were on a twenty-four hour, seven-day basis. Still only a fraction of
the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their
seats, supplied with Yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its
coffins.

It might be supposed that Christmas goods other than caskets would
take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of
prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins, that nearly
everything--with a few exceptions--enjoyed the biggest season on
record.

On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas
morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The
nation sat down to