"No, gentlemen, I'll do better. I'll solve this situation once for all by loaning my general sales manager, Mr. Blat, to dear old Weehawken for two months, and he will give the members of the Faculty the same tutoring course he gives the men we send out on the road. Within a year after they leave his hands these same profs you've mentioned will be writing 'Success Through Sanscrit' and 'How I made My Pile with Paleontology' for the _American Magazine_."
At the conclusion of this loyal speech the committee would give a long cheer and depart checkless but with a new vision.
And, sure enough, the pale pedagogues would emerge from Mr. Blat's snappy seminar simply exuding system. They would possess the Power to Meet Men, the Personality that Wins. Laboratory recluses would burst forth primed to impress with Bigger Biology--Contains More Bunk.
The Sanscrit savant, formerly threadbare, but now a nifty dresser, would immediately hop a train for New York and breeze into the office of Hugh G. Wads, senior member of Wads & Wads and Chairman of the Trustees of Weehawken University.
"Good morning, Mr. Wads," he would say aggressively. "I've come here this morning to talk Vedas."
"Vedas? I don't get you. Never heard of such a stock. It isn't listed on the big board, and if it's traded in on the Curb, the dealings must be pretty small. Besides, I thought you were a professor at Weehawken."
"Right. I am a professor, if you choose to put it that way. Technically, though, I'm a promoter, and my proposition is VEDAS (Trade mark copyrighted 2000 B. C.)."
"Ah, that is precisely why I am here. I was sure you would want to know--Cigar?--Well, Vedas are the wisdom songs of India. Mellowed by forty centuries in the parchment. One hundred per cent Hindu. Classy yet conservative; noble yet nobby. You know what caste is among the Brahmins?--well, that's how exclusive these are!"
"Yes, and I'm offering them for immediate delivery to students."
"I was just getting to that. This is a proposition which requires considerable capital for its development. At the present time only seven students have asked for Vedas, yet I have estimated that the supply of Vedas now mellowing out in India is enough for at least 180,000 students. Which means that if we created the demand--why, think of the business we could do! When you come right down to it, a Veda, when presented in the right way, can be as catchy as a Kewpie."