dirt—all three luscious tempting things in the Back of a magazine: and Automobiles—ask the man who owns one: and Rifles—simple and formidable and fine: and restful Rat-poison—they die in the open air seeking water: and sacks of Flour—eventually why not now—flour unusual and piquant in the Back of a magazine, flour novel and endearing: and Type-writers: and Mushrooms: and Monkey-Wrenches: and Rosaries: and Rock-salt—
the Back, the Back, the Back of a magazine—
There's no sadness and no terror in the Back of a magazine.
And it is for Everybody, Everybody.
A million people read a story in the middle of the magazine and half the million readily miss its point. But a single tin of Talcum Powder in the Back—the whole million note that and miss nothing in it: it gets to them both on and under their skin.
Some of the million read a ten-line poem in vers libre in the front of the magazine—and nine-tenths of their number are hard-put to it: the mentalities of this human race being mostly shops shut down. It is something pregnant and prophetic to a poet, merely musical to a plain prose writer, arrant folly to a telephone girl, amusing nonsense to a butcher, a comic fantasy to a milliner, a form of insanity to a plumber, an unknown tongue to a milk-man, a
