Even the "Wants" column has its amusing features. Here is a very creditable specimen from the London Times of the year 1850:

DO YOU WANT A SERVANT? Necessity prompts the question. The advertiser OFFERS his SERVICES to any lady or gentleman, company, or others, in want of a truly faithful, confidential servant in any capacity, not menial, where a practical knowledge of human nature in various parts of the world would be available. Could undertake any affair, of small or great importance, where talent, inviolable secrecy, or good address would be necessary. Has moved in the best and worst societies, without being contaminated by either; has never been a servant; begs to recommend himself as one who knows his place; is moral, temperate, middle-aged; no objection to any part of the world. Could advise any capitalist wishing to increase his income and have the control of his own money. Could act as secretary or valet to any lady or gentleman. Can give advice, or hold his tongue, sing, dance, play, fence, box, preach a sermon, tell a story, be grave or gay, ridiculous or sublime, or do anything, from the curling of a peruke to the storming of a citadel-but never to excel his master. Address, etc.

Does the reader note the nice condescension of this paragon in engaging never to excel his master? He will keep his multiform accomplishments in check, so as not to overshadow his employer.

Here are a few more "Wants" from various portions of the globe that tell their own story and tell it joyously and well:

From the Clevedon (Eng.) Mercury:

Wanted-A really plain but experienced and efficient governess for three girls, eldest 16. Music, French, and German required. Brilliancy of conversation, fascination of manner, and symmetry of form objected to, as the father is much at home and there are grown-up sons. Address Mater, Post-Office, Clevedon.

From the Edinburgh Scotsman :

Servant-Wanted, by a family living in an Edinburgh flat, a general servant, who will kindly superintend her mistress in cooking and washing, nursing the baby, etc. She will have every Sunday and two nights out in each week, and the use of the drawing-room for the reception of her friends. Address A. F., Scotsman Office.

From the Paris Figaro:

Wanted-A professor to come twice a week to the house of a noble family in order to reform the pronunciation of a parrot.

The ingenuous reader may have imagined that prize-fighting and boxing were the especial privileges of the stronger half of humanity. A glance at the advertising columns of the eighteenth-century papers will convince him of his mistake. The following is by no means a solitary instance. It ap peared in the Daily Post of July 17, 1728, in the form of a challenge and

answer :

Whereas I, Ann Field, of Stoke-Newington, ass-driver, well known for my abilities in boxing in my own defence wherever it happened in my way, having been affronted by Mrs. Stokes, styled the European Championess, do fairly invite her to a trial of the best skill in boxing, for ten pounds, fair rise and fall; and question not but to give her such proofs of my judgment that shall oblige her to acknowledge me Championess of the Stage, to the entire satisfaction of all my friends.

I, Elizabeth Stokes, of the city of London, have not fought in this way since I fought the famous boxing woman of Billingsgate twenty-nine minutes, and gained a complete victory (which is six years ago); but as the famous Stoke-Newington ass-woman dares me to fight her for the ten pounds, I do assure her I will not fail meeting her for the said sum, and doubt not that the blows which I shall present her with will be more difficult for her to digest than she ever gave her asses.

But it seems to have been discovered that even these degraded creatures had not lost all the characteristics of their sex. Some challenges provide that each woman shall hold half a crown in each hand, "the first woman that drops the money to lose the battle." Evidently the feminine temptation to use the nails instead of the fists had to be provided against.

The Newcastle Courant of January 4, 1770, contained this notice, which could not have failed to excite curiosity:

This is to acquaint the public, that on Monday the first instant, being the Lodge (or monthly meeting) Night of the Free and Accepted Masons of the 22d Regiment held at the Crown, near Newgate (Newcastle), Mrs. Bell, the landlady of the house, broke open a door (with a poker) that had not been open for some time past; by which means she got into an adjacent room, made two holes through the wall, and, by that stratagem, discovered the secrets of Freemasonry; and she, knowing herself to be the first woman in the world that ever found out the secret, is willing to make it known to all her sex. So any lady who is desirous of learning the secrets of Freemasonry, by applying to that well-learned woman (Mrs. Bell, that lived fifteen years in and about Newgate) may be instructed in the secrets of Masonry.

Our advertising ancestors frequently broke into verse. Here is a fair sample from the Salem (Mass.) Register of September 6, 1801, in which poetry and prose, remonstrance and business, are quaintly intermixed :

The following lines were written in the shop of the subscriber by a son of St. Crispin, viewing with contempt the tyrannical and oppressive disposition of a man who has threatened vengeance on his neighbor's business because the article he deals in is SHOES:

Salem, 9th Mo. 6th, 1801.

Oh Shame! that Man a Dog should imitate,
And only live, his fellow Man to hate.
An envious Dog once in a manger lay,
And starved himself to keep an Ox from hay.
Altho' thereof he could not eat,

Yet if the Ox was starved to him 'twas sweet
His neighbor's comfort thus for to annoy,
Altho' thereby he did his own destroy.

O Man, such actions from the page erase,
And from thy breast malicious envy chase.

Twenty per cent. was struck off at one clip, from those kind of shoes which are mostly It is fifteen months since the Shoe War commenced.

worn.

J. MANSFIELD, 3rd.

But it is tradesmen, quacks, theatrical managers, etc., people, in short, who wish to attract the public attention to their own pecuniary profit,-it is this portion of the race who have developed advertising, especially in the latter half of the present century, into an art that taxes all the creative faculties of the human mind. Their forerunners of past ages trusted merely to the resources of a gorgeous vocabulary. They used up all the laudatory adjectives in the language, and there was an end on 't. Their successors of to-day know better. They understand such appeals are made only to the eye and are immediately forgotten. It is necessary to arrest attention, to startle, to pique curiosity, to do something odd, bizarre, outré, extravagant,―to be sensational above everything. Such methods set people to wondering, thinking, and talking. The earliest appeals of this sort were made in the comparatively conventional direction of literature and art. Wit, poetry, and wood-engraving were called into play. At first it was very poor wit, poor poetry, poor wood-engraving. When the novelty wore off it ceased to attract attention. Then advertisers began to turn themselves into Mæcenases. They patronized the skilful pen and the cunning pencil. The world would be astonished if it knew how many men now famous have written puffs for tradesmen. And two men, one in England and another in America, have won fame for themselves in the exclusive service of the advertiser. The first was George Robins, the English auctioneer, whose advertisements of estates for sale were, half a century ago, conned and studied with as much gusto as the latest poem or romance. His description of that terrestrial paradise whose only drawback was "the litter of the rose-leaves and the noise of the nightingales" has become a classic. The second is Mr. Powers, formerly of Wanamaker's Bazaar, in Philadelphia. He had a facility of phrase, a virile simplicity of style, a directness and an ingenuous candor, that indicated literary abilities

of a high order. When he wrote them, Wanamaker's advertisements won a national reputation. Many people turned to them first when they took up the morning papers, sure of finding something fresh and interesting even if they had no desire to purchase.

As to art, Cruikshank was the first well-known man to lend his pencil to the advertiser. His capital sketch, made for a blacking-establishment, of the cat seeing herself reflected and spitting at the boot, is still in use after half a century's service. A London soap-firm recently purchased the right of reproducing one of John Rogers's most famous little groups. And you have but to turn to the pages of any modern periodical to recognize what excellent work, mostly unsigned and unacknowledged, but betraying the well-known characteristics of eminent artists, is done for advertising purposes. Famous works of art, also, have been pressed into the same service in an indirect way. Hotels and bar-rooms attract custom by hanging on their walls the authentic works of great masters, old and new. Cigarette-dealers and others reproduce uncopyrighted masterpieces in miniature form, and give them away with their

wares.

But as the spirit of journalism has invaded literature and art, so it has invaded the advertising business. The sensational methods of editors and reporters have been aped by the advertisers in near-by columns. Who does not remember the thrilling "reading notices," once so popular, which, after holding you breathless with the account of an accident, a love-story, a tale of adventure, finally landed you into a box of pills or a bottle of castor oil? Then there was the enigmatical notice, not yet extinct, which arrested attention and kept you in wondering suspense, until such time as the advertiser deemed ripe to spring the explanation,-the notice which cried, "In the name of the Prophet," and waited until you had pricked up your ears before it added, "Figs.' An early example of this occurred in London some thirty years ago. One morning the good people woke up to find the interrogation "Who's Blank?" staring them everywhere in the face,-in the newspapers, on the walls and hoardings of the town, even on the pavements. As day after day passed, the reiterated query set everybody to thinking. "Who indeed is Blank?" So everybody asked, but nobody knew. Presently the words "Fire! Fire! Thieves! Thieves !" following the query, deepened the mystery. At last the secret was out when the enterprising owner of a newly-patented safe added his name to the announcement.

The mysterious statement, in large letters, "724 MORE," which simultaneously invaded the American press all over the country, carried wonder and even uneasiness to many an American household. One can imagine the whole family puzzling their brains over it for days. Finally, one morning, Young Hopeful bursts out breathlessly, “Pop! I know what 724 More is !" "What is it?" cries every one, expectantly. "Pancakes!" And then it comes out that 724 more pancakes can be made out of Puff's Baking Powder than out of any other.

Tricks of the type are a lower form of art, and have now lost much of their efficacy. It is only the uninventive mind that seeks to attract attention by italics, capitals, exclamation marks, and the use of strange and uncouth letters. Even the familiar trick of setting up announcements in diagonal form, or of inverting the letters, palls upon a sated public. There is still great virtue, however, in large capitals and the force of iteration. If day in and day out the public have the name of any article pressed conspicuously upon their attention, that name is unconsciously fixed in the mind like a household word. And the effect is more certain if the name appears in some unlooked-for spot and in an unfamiliar environment. The knowledge of these facts has led advertisers to drop their lines in other places besides the daily papers.

And so it came around that bill-posters stuck up flaring advertisements on walls, on fences, on bill-boards, that the interiors of cars and omnibuses were decorated with signs, that pavements were stencilled with trade notices, that peripatetic artists swarmed over the country painting the names of quack medicines on the palings of fences, the sides of houses and barns, on rocks, trees, and river-banks.

66

Bill-posting was first used in connection with the drama. The very name indicates this. As far back as 1579, John Northbrooke, in his treatise against theatrical performances, says, They use to set up their bills upon posts, some certain days before, to admonish people to make resort to their theatres." Later, notices of houses to rent, of sales, auction, etc., were posted. Then followed all manner of advertisements. But not until twoscore years ago was bill-posting systematized into a business. Anciently the best billposter was the mighty man of brass and muscle, who, knowing nothing of law or license, tore down his rival's placard and set up his own in its stead. Sometimes the rival would show fight. Sometimes the owner of the property would object to its desecration, and serve an injunction on the bill-poster. Undaunted, however, the latter would lease out his contract to another man, who would stick up his bills before the court could issue a new injunction. At last the system of leasing space sprang up. The owner leased his space to the bill-sticker, who could enforce the right as against his rival. This system dates from 1876. It has led to the establishment of large firms, many of whom control space throughout the entire Union, and can, at a moment's bidding, proclaim the merits of a soap or a patent medicine throughout the land.

Worst of all, the bill-poster has amalgamated with the peripatetic artist of the brush. When the latter first sprang into being, he was a distinct individuality and a most offensive one. Nothing in nature was too sacred for him, indeed, the more sacred, the greater the advertisement. The most magnificent scenery was profaned. The sign-painter often had to stand up to his neck in water, or climb apparently inaccessible peaks, to reach the most striking locality for his "ad." He was hooted by the newspapers, and shot at by enraged worshippers of the beautiful. But no danger, no difficulty,

daunted him.

The most remarkable of these early pioneers was the owner of a certain Plantation Bitters. He devised an enigmatic inscription, “S. T. 1860. X.," which shortly appeared in every newspaper and on every available fence, rock, tree, bill-board, or barn throughout the country, on wagons, railroadcars, ships, and steamers. One day all the exposed rocks in the Niagara rapids bloomed out with the mystic sign. Forest-trees along the lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad were hewn down to afford the passengers a glimpse of the same announcement emblazoned in letters four hundred feet high on the mountain-side. Then the manufacturer's agents went abroad. Cheops' pyramid was not too sacred for him, nor the place on Mount Ararat where the Ark is said to have landed. He even announced that he would discover the North Pole for the express purpose of decorating it with the cabalistic words. And what did the words mean? Many puzzled their heads over them in. vain. Not until the proprietor had retired with a fortune did he reveal the secret. "S. T. 1860. X." meant, "Started trade in 1860 with $10."

But we have not yet exhausted all the arts of the advertiser. Something should be said about the sad-eyed sandwich-man, braced between two billboards and set adrift in the crowded streets; something also of the various perambulatory advertisements which have been gradually evolved from this simple germ of the negro gentleman exquisitely arrayed, save only for a huge standing collar, on which is printed the name of the firm that employs him; of the army of tall men, all over six feet six inches in height, whom a

manufacturer of rubber goods clad in long rubber coats, bearing his name and trade-mark, and then cast out on the highways and by-ways of the metrop olis; of the countless numbers of men and boys bedecked in fantastic costumes and placed in the streets to distribute circulars.

A quarter of a century ago, a London manager invented a new advertising scheme which has been the fruitful parent of many similar devices. A drama called "The Dead Heart" was being played at his theatre. He ordered ten hundred thousand hearts to be printed in red, inscribed with the words Dead Heart, and had them posted everywhere, upon the pavements, upon the walls, upon the trees in the parks, upon the seats, and even upon the backs of revellers who were returning home in a convivial but oblivious mood. Twenty years later, one of his imitators devised a still more startling scheme. He was manager of the melodrama "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab." Hiring a number of hansoms, he placed in each the dummy figure of a man in a dress suit, with blood-bespattered shirt, and had them driven through the principal streets. He succeeded even better than he had expected. The ghastly spectacle became the talk of all London. The newspapers denounced it as an atrocity. It was said that nervous people had fainted, that children had screamed, and that ladies had gone off in hysterics. Finally, the authorities gave the lucky manager an additional "ad." by ordering the hansoms back to the stables under pain of arrest.

Over in Vienna, a theatrical manager advertised for five thousand cats. The strange announcement attracted general attention. At the appointed day and hour the entrance to the theatre was blocked by a vast crowd of men, women, and children with bags, baskets, or coat-pockets stuffed with cats. The manager bought them all, fixed labels around their necks announcing the first performance of a grand pantomime in the following week, then turned them loose, and let them scamper off in all directions. Of course the manager did not depend merely on the labels. He knew that the novelty of the scheme would set press and public to talking, and he was right in his calculations.

A story has recently gone the rounds of the press which is quite good enough to be true. A poor clergyman wishing to buy hymn-books for his congregation at the lowest possible price, a London firm offered to supply him gratuitously with a line of books containing certain advertisements. The minister complied, thinking to himself that, when the books arrived, the advertisements could be removed, but, to his joy and surprise, he found no interleaved advertisements. On the first Sunday after the new books had been distributed, the congregation found themselves singing,

Hark! the herald angels sing,
Beecham's Pills are just the thing;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,

Two for man and one for child.'

Advice. An axiom of proverbial as well as of written philosophy is summed up in this phrase of Hazlitt's: “Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us except the very thing we wish them to do. There is one thing in particular they are always disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to take, namely, advice." (Characteristics, No. 88.) Johnson offers an excellent reason both for the willingness on one side and the unwillingness on the other: "Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious." (Rambler, No. 87.) If this be true, then it evidently follows, to quote his own words again from a letter to Mrs. Piozzi, "The advice that is wanted is generally unwelcome, and that which is not wanted is generally impertinent." Horace Smith, therefore, suggests quite the right attitude towards

B