CHAPTER XVIII. HANDBILLS, INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.

up once a week before the sitting alderman as a nuisance, by way of advertisement, killed a bear upon this, and hung him up whole in full sight in his shop. He also wrote in the window, “A fresh bear killed this day!” The other, who had but one bear in all the world, which he privately led out of his house after dark every night, and brought him back in the morning (to seem like a new supply going on), continued his sale, and announced in his window, “Our fresh bear will be killed to-morrow.” The original vendor then, determined to cut off his rival’s last shift, kept his actual bears, defunct, with the skins only half off, like calves at a butcher’s, hanging up always at his door, proclaimed that “all bear’s grease sold in pots was a vile imposture,” and desired his customers to walk in “and see theirs with their own eyes, cut and weighed from the animal.” This seemed conclusive for two days; but on the third, the cunning opposition was again to the fore, with a placard “founded on the opinion of nine doctors of physic,” which stated that bear’s grease “obtained from the animal in a tamed or domesticated state, will not make anybody’s hair grow at all.” In consequence of which, he went on to say, “he has formed an establishment in Russia (where all the best bears come from), for catching them wild, cutting the fat off immediately, and potting it down for London consumption.” And the rogue actually ruined the business of his antagonist, without going to the expense of