The ad winds up with the important information that the people which
Joe works for is so close to the patent office gang that they could get
French fried potatoes copyrighted. For the sum of "write for
particulars," they'll rush madly from Washington papers that'll protect
any idea you got, before some snake-in-the-grass friend plies you with
strawberry sundaes and steals your secret. At the bottom of this
there's a long list of things sadly needed by a sufferin' public, which
will willin'ly shower their inventor with medals and money,--things
like non-playable ukaleles, doctors which can guess what's the matter
with _you_ instead of your bankroll, grape fruit that won't hit back
while you're eatin' it, non-refillable jails and so forth. All you got
to do is stake yourself to a couple of test tubes, a white apron and a
laboratory, hire Edison, Marconi, Maxim and Hennery Ford as
assistants--with the U. S. Mint in back of you in case expenses come
up--and you'll wake up some mornin' to find yourself the talk of Fall
River.

I been lookin' over these ads for a long time, but there's three names
I never seen on the list of famous inventors. They are to wit: the guy
that discovered the only absolute cure for rheumatism, the one that
invented the dope book on the female race and the bird that holds a
patent on the complete understandin' of human nature. I guess the
reason I never seen _their_ names is because the thing ain't really
been decided yet--there seems to be some difference of opinion. But if
you wanna find out how many guys there are that swear they invented
_all_ them things, look up the population of the world. The figures is
exactly the same.

I ain't met nobody yet which didn't admit they had the only correct
dope on women, rheumatism and human nature, but I'm still waitin' to be
introduced to the guy which really knows anything at all about _any_ of
'em, when it gets right down to the box score!

The nearest I ever come to knowin' the original patentee to two of 'em
was Eddie Duke. Eddie is one of the best men in the movable picture
game, accordin' to everybody but himself. _He_ concedes he's _the_
best. He's a little, aggressive guy which would of prob'ly been a
lightweight champion, for instance, if it hadn't been for his parents.
They killed off his chances of makin' _big_ money, by slippin' him a
medium dose of education when he was too young to fight back. Eddie's
like a million other guy