Never fear, ladies! Help is on the way - prize-winning, peerless, potash-free help. Potash, or potassium carbonate, is used in making soap, glass and fertilizer. Not boot-polish, thank goodness.You will never again be caught sneaking out of the house with matte-finish, miserable-looking baby carriages, dingy boots, soiled rubbers or rusty satchels.
That is quite an image Mr. Hauthaway manages to conjure up in a few lines. I am imagining some poor lackluster, exhausted mother struggling along the street sporting all of these non-shiny items. And while I never hauled a leather satchel, and umbrella strollers don't really take to boot-blacking - I do remember those days when I could have used a little Peerless Gloss.
From The Housekeepers' Friend (Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, 1880), no page number listed [at front with other advertisements].
8 comments:
Thank goodness!
My button-up boots and satchels will sparkle once more!
I'll bet I was wheeled around in a miserable looking baby carriage. It would explain many of my maladjustments.
Did they make a version for gentlemen?
Woo! I hate those 'miserable looking baby carriages'!
Jayne - I wonder if it works on New Balance? Probably not...
Bill - From the photographic evidence, it seems that my baby carriage (which was the size of a small car) was not shiny. And like you, I feel that this explains many things...
Hairball - Probably, if there was money in it.
Meghann - Oh, so do I! And yet...our were never shiny (I have 2 girls so we went through a whole lineup of vehicles, including a couple of wagons, also not shiny)
Loving your posts as always...such a creative way to poke fun! I chose you as one of my favorite blogs to tag...just one of those answer questions tags. If you want to play, go to my blog to get the questions..there's only three of them! Rock on with those Awesome ads!
And it will not soil the finest clothing.
It WILL soil, however, your everyday clothing - which is what you are more likely wearing when you recondition the leather on your miserable pram. Just smear a bit on your white blouse and let's test this claim out. You go first. I don't have a blouse... )
Notice how painstakingly accurate they are when referencing the number of bottles sold this month. This is to assure you of their honesty.
Alterity - Thank you! I will go check it out. I tend to do tags in a retro-ad sort of way, so I will see what I can think of.
Max - The laundry basket tends to more than adequately satisfy my schmutz requirements in life, so I was also suspicious of this product. It must be like shoe polish - and black shoe polish is like a tiresome celebrity: it turns up everywhere.
I think that the reference to the number of bottles sold shows some defensive sense of inadequacy, don't you? I think this just squeaks into the Freudian era (which I guess begins about 1895ish with Studies in Hysteria).
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