nto buying something I do
not want.

If I could only find such a book of instructions I would go tomorrow and
order a black cotton engineer's shirt from that sandy-mustached salesman
and bawl him out if he raised his eyebrows. But not having the book, I
shall go in and, without a murmur, buy a $3 silk shirt for $18 and slink
out feeling that if I had been any kind of sport at all I would also
have bought that cork helmet in the showcase.

LIV

"YOU!"

In the window of the grocery store to which I used to be sent after a
pound of Mocha and Java mixed and a dozen of your best oranges, there
was a cardboard figure of a clerk in a white coat pointing his finger at
the passers-by. As I remember, he was accusing you of not taking home a
bottle of Moxie, and pretty guilty it made you feel too.

This man was, I believe, the pioneer in what has since become a great
literary movement. He founded the "You, Mr. Business-Man!" school of
direct appeal. It is strictly an advertising property and has long been
used to sell merchandise to people who never can resist the flattery of
being addressed personally. When used as an advertisement it is usually
accompanied by an illustration built along the lines of the pioneer
grocery-clerk, pointing a virile finger at you from the page of the
magazine, and putting the whole thing on a personal basis by
addressing you as "You, Mr. Rider-in-the-Open-Cars!" or "You, Mr.
Wearer-of-141/2-Shirts!" The appeal is instantaneous.

In straight reading-matter, bound in book form and sold as literature,
this Moxie talk becomes a volume of inspirational sermonizing, and
instead of selling cooling drinks or warming applications, it throws
dynamic paragraph after dynamic paragraph into the fight for efficiency,
concentration, self-confidence and personality on the part of our body
politic. A homely virtue such as was taught us at our mother's knee (or
across our mother's knees) at the age of four, in a dozen or so simple
words, is taken and blown up into a book in which it is stated very
impressively in a series of short, snappy sentences, all saying the same
thing.

Such a book is called, for instance "You," written by Irving R. Allen.

* * * * *

"You" takes 275 pages to divulge a secret of success. It would not be
fair to Mr. Allen to give it away here after he has spent so much time
concealing it. But it might be possible to give some idea of the
importan