Testimonial

What a master stroke of business it would be for the Arrow Collar people to advertise in Life that handsome Langhorne Gibson, son of Publisher Charles Dana Gibson, seldom appears in public with his neck encased in any collar other than Arrow's gracile model, Kebo.

What a master stroke if the Lambert Chemical Co. could secure insertion in the New York Times of an advertising display assuring the public that its product, Listerine, is faithfully used (as an after-shaving lotion) by Publisher Adoplh S. Ochs.

How masterly if copy could be prepared for the Saturday Evening Post showing Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis in part of an extensive wardrobe designed and cut by Messrs. Hart, Schaffner & Marx; or for the Cosmopolitan, Town and Country, Hearst's International, etc., etc., to depict Mrs. William Randolph Hearst fitted and satisfied with Shur-On eyeglasses.

Just such a feat was brought off last week by an employe of the Pond's Extract Co. The Chicago Tribune published a full page in the current Pond's Extract series of testimonial-persuasions, the central figure of which was attractive young Miss Elinor Patterson, daughter of Major Joseph Medill Patterson, the Tribune's owner and publisher. In no uncertain words the Tribune's 1,020,427* readers were let into the secret of how Miss Patterson's "lovely skin with its rare petal texture, its flush of unfolding youth, its transparent delicacy" is kept "imperishable" in spite of a "double strain" that now bears upon it:

"A debut as gay as a burst of jazz! A season of teas, balls, the opera and other girls' debuts! Heavenly for a year, but like a perpetual diet of whipped cream!

"So after a season of this gaiety, I turned to something more substantial--the theatre! You know what that means--work! And just when one is slaving one's hardest one has to appear at one's very best!

"For the skin which is doubly taxed by society and professional life and which must be kept clear, fresh and free from weariness and that horrid pasty look, Pond's Two Creams are perfect, so fragrant and pleasant of texture, so sure in fulfillment."

(Signed) "ELINOR PATTERSON."

Chicagoans were already well acquainted with Miss Patterson as an actress, had often seen the accompanying photograph of her as Nun Megildis in The Miracle. They were further supplied with a portrait of her in her opera cloak and pearls; with a view of the red lacquer ballroom of the Palmer House, crowded with fashionable guests, where she made her debut; with a "closeup" of a boudoir table which might have been hers, displaying more pearls and two jars of Pond's cold and vanishing creams.

It made little difference whether Chicagoans jibbed at the thought of Miss Patterson permitting her name and beauty secrets to be exploited thus, or whether they said: "Very pretty and sensible. She is following in the footsteps of Mrs. Nicholas Longworth and many another society woman with the best interests of Industry at heart, and of Julia Lydig Hoyt, Irene Bordoni, the Talmadge sisters and many another actress who has perceived the perfectly proper and logical sympathy that exists between cosmetic manufacturers and professional women, whose beauty is one of their assets."

Such opinions were quite beside the point, which was that a master stroke of testimonial advertising had been achieved--testimony by one of the immediate family of the medium's publisher. It quite outshone other current testimonials, outshone even the portraits of Paderewski and Hoffman in Steinway's dignified, colorful series; outshone Vladimir de Pachmann's long letter--"Through you I live forever!"--to the AutoPneumatic Action Co. (Welte-Mignon pianos); even Countess Starzynska's pearl-festooned pose in a Patou gown; even the fact that Rigaud perfume was used to scent the house at Consuelo Vanderbilt's wedding; even Mrs. Oliver Harriman's frosty elegance of face and phrase in the Willys-Knight reminders; even Prince Luis de Bourbon's witty crack in the new and aristocratic American Tobacco Co. series: "When do you feel like a prince? Smoking a Melachrino."

*That many on Sunday. (658,948 daily.)