The Island of Desire by Robert Dean Frisbie

Now the schooner is in, and once again I am a South Sea trader; the days of epicurean beachcombing are at an end--and a good thing, too, with marriage imminent. For the past few days I have been busy brightening up the trade room with smell soap, Lord Beaconsfield Twist Tobacco, Derby Honey Dew Cut Plug, lollipops, print, muslin, dungaree, unbleached calico, some hanks of fishline, bright red firecrackers and shiny mouth organs, bush knives and pipe knives, striped singlets and squeaking shoes--the same shoddy junk that I sold back in the 1920's.

There is displayed on the shelves at the present moment an assortment of fine matting, stick-to-the-chests, and stick-to-the-legs. You no savvy? How dense! Fine matting is cloth, and the stick-things are undershirts and pants. Also there is a whole gross of cero-kingfish, sometimes known as pipe knives because of the tobacco pipes the makers stamp on each blade as a trade mark, but which we call cero-kingfish because the tooth of that fish was our knife in the old days. Also there is a case of doctor soap, which is known as carbolic soap in other countries. Our name demonstrates that modern advertising has reached even the loneliest isles of the South Seas.