To most of us, the name “Tiny Tim” recalls the late Herbert Khaury, he of the uke and falsetto. We may also think of the plaintive tot in Dickens, or — if smitten with old comic strips — Stanley Link’s minuscule hero of the ’30s.

But there was another, now forgotten, yet once a familiar New York character: “Tiny Tim” Felter, who peddled his “Soul Candy” in the tearooms and coffeeshops of Greenwich Village, back in its boho heyday.

Curiously, he sounds much like the later tiptoer; so much so, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if he inspired Khaury’s stage name. He was tall, thin, pale, with long black hair, and adopted a markedly fey persona.

Edmund Wilson chatted with him, and noted his impressions in his diary (later collected in “The Twenties”): “Soul Candy — wide-brimmed Stetson hat and green suit to match the day — “Inspiration” — said to have made such a good thing of it (May 1923) that he is able to live uptown with his wife and children — some say he merely has a house in the country — has written philosophical pamphlets, which he produces and presents to you when sufficiently encouraged — never comes out of his character, even when engaging in serious conversation…  curious smiling expression which never betrayed his character.”

Clement Wood, in his booklet “Bohemian Life in N.Y.’s Greenwich Village” (issued as a Little Blue Book, #1106), was less amused: “And there was the dreadful unnamed character who would lisp and purr his way into the Greenwich Tavern and others of the eateries patronized by the slummers, who would offer for sale, in a wheedling treble, “Soul Kiss Candies,” a quarter for two or three bonbons which had cost him perhaps two cents! He would get the quarters, too, amid memories of ‘How quaint!’ ‘How adorable!'”

To my delight, Tiny Tim’s sales pitch has been preserved, in a “Souvenir Book of Greenwich Village,” by Ralph I. Bartolomew, published in 1920. And it’s worth preserving, too. Here it is:

“Every taste and every flavor has its own particular vibrations. They vibrate as truly as the sounding-board of the piano vibrates. If your ear is trained you can detect vibrations in music which the uninitiated would be unable to hear.

“One day I discovered, by the merest chance, that I am so sensitively constituted that my soul is in constant vibration with taste waves. I determined to devote myself to humanity and the manufacture of Soul Candy, which produces marvelous results in the souls of those who eat it. Would you write the world’s greatest epic, conceive a super Moonlight Sonata, paint a more perfect Mona Lisa? Then partake of this Soul Candy. I make it for altruistic reasons only. I desire no monetary reward. Eat, I pray you. It costs you nothing. In fact, money could not pay for it. You object? You are embarrassed? You decline? You are unwilling that one whom you consider a perfect stranger should thus endow your soul with lasting benefit? Money I despise, but if you insist upon it, if you will not eat without making vulgar compensation, then give me a quarter and take a bag of this Soul Candy.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)