Do not pin your hopes on the magic of the next big idea, but rather place your confidence in the power of better words. The wheel needs not to be reinvented.
Sources confirm that Ralph Waldo Emerson is the author of the following words, “ If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
No one seems to know what year this was written, nor the publication in which it appeared. This is because the quote was actually penned 28 years after Emerson died – by an ad writer named Elbert Hubbard.
Hubbard admitted to writing the mousetrap epigram, after large numbers of visitors flocked to the tiny village of East Aurora where his manufacturing company was.
“I gave it specific gravity by attributing it to one Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Hubbard said. Was Hubbard deceitful? I don’t think so. He merely told the story a little more powerfully than Emerson.
On page 528 in volume 8 of Emerson’s Journal, February 1855, you’ll find:
Common Fame; I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
Hubbard said what Emerson said. Only he said it better. We are more likely to remember Hubbard’s words because he used verbs that are visually stimulating: “write,” “preach,” “make,” he gave us clear images: “book,” “sermon,””mousetrap,”; and his promise of benefit was memorable: “…the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
Emerson’s original statement is unknown because of its lack in delivery. He uses soft words like corn, wood, boards, chairs, church organs; and ends of with a weak qualifier: “…you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.”
Hubbard, an ad writer, leads us through his story a little different, so that he might close with a grand gesture – the unforgettable image of the whole world beating a path to our door!
Emerson might have had the idea, but it took the keen eye of an ad writer to cause it to live forever in the imaginations of men.
How good are your ads?
“The Advertising man is liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either.” – Glenn Frank
- Martin
