HOAXITY HOAX

It is perhaps inevitable in an age of prompt publicity that many a trivial incident should reach the general world in a halo or with horns. At any rate eager reporters--sometimes play fairy godmother to publicity agents. One of these, Harry Reichenbach, has just begun a series of articles of which the first appears in the current "Liberty", a bit gloating in manner, but none the less picturesque.

Mr. Reichenbach is particularly proud of having raised, on a wager, a certain Nina Barbour from sweatshop to stage within ten days. He engaged two actresses (whose publicity he handled) to halt their car, as if with motor trouble, before a dingy building on the Bowery. As pre-arranged, a sweet voice sounded from a window, singing "On the Banks of the Wabash". Also as pre-arranged, the two actresses stepped from their car, stared up at the window, and, before the crowd thus attracted, entered the building and brought Nina Barbour out to notoriety and motored her away to a consequent theatre contract. Again, Mr. Reichenbach brought success as a screen play to the tawdry "Tarzan of the Apes", by releasing a live ape named Prince Charley in the vestibule of the Hotel Knickerbocker. He writes "Next morning the story broke in every New York paper. Over long accounts of Charlie's adventures, were such headlines as, 'Tarzan's Ape Raids Knickerbocker Hotel' and 'Simian Royalty Steps Out'".

Mr. Reichenbach concludes that Barnum was right, perhaps Hamilton also. He couches his sentiment in the following plebeian idioms: "This and my other experiences as an engineer of publicity have convinced me that the axis of the earth is lubricated with banana oil and that the world thrives on applesauce".