This ad for Chesterfield cigarettes appeared in a number of papers, including the Pensacola (Florida) Journal, a hundred years ago today, November 30, 1920. The ad copy reads as follows:

Young Hiram Jinks
had tried for weeks
to talk to Mars
by Wireless.

He’d pounded his key,
calling “Mars, Hello, Mars,”
until his right biceps
was the village pride.
He hardly dared to sleep
lest he miss the call,
And say! One evening,
he got an answering buzz,
“yep, this is Mars.”
And Hiram shook all over
and stuttered back in Morse,
“have you any word,
for us on Earth?”

Quick came the answer.
“You can tell the world,
they satisfy!” Then silence.

Hiram ran to the corner store
and shouted in triumph.
“A message from Mars!
You can tell the world.
They Satisfy.”

But the village elders,
merely snorted “shucks
known that for years.”

While out in the army camp,
the radio man,
who’d been kidding Hiram,
threw away his butt
and laughed himself to sleep.