Bret Harte, best known for his Western tales, turns his sharp eye to the commercialization of American life in this gleefully satirical poem from 1887. The setting is an Eastern village, where a young man with a stencil-plate for 'SAPOLIO' (a popular cleaning product of the era) marches through town, bellowing his advertising jingle at every turn. Village shopkeeps, housewives, and travelers alike express their annoyance, their curiosity, and eventually their resigned acceptance of his relentless promotion. Yet the young man never wavers. He climbs, he descends, he persists, his dedication to the product both absurd and oddly admirable. Harte captures the manic energy of late-19th-century consumer culture with perfect comic timing, using the jingling rhythm of the advertising jingle to burrow into your head like any good slogan. It's a brief, wickedly funny portrait of ambition unchained from reason, and a reminder that the hard sell is nothing new to the American experience.
