Puffery Extraordinary
A manufacturer of patent medicines wrote to a friend living on a farm in the West for a good strong recommendation for his (the manufacturer’s) “Balsam.” In a few days he received the following:
“Dear Sir,—The land composing my farm had hitherto been so poor that a Scotchman could not get a living off it, and so stony that we had to slice our potatoes and plant them edgeways, but hearing of your balsam, I put some on a ten-acre lot surrounded by a railroad fence, and in the morning I found that the rock had entirely disappeared, a neat stone wall encircled the field, and the rails were split into oven wood, and piled up systematically in my back-yard.
I put half an ounce into the middle of a huckleberry swamp; in two days it was cleared off, planted with corn and pumpkins, and a row of peach-trees in full blossom through the middle.
As an evidence of its tremendous strength, I would say that it drew a striking likeness of my eldest son out of a mill-pond, drew a blister all over his stomach, drew a load of potatoes four miles to market, and eventually drew a prize of ninety-seven dollars in a lottery.”