way; but doubtless the majority are too intent on getting money to care much for what is said about them. Indeed there are many who exult in the notion of making capital by all kinds of advertisements, from the puff preliminary to the nauseating display of vile quackery or undisguised immorality, and vary this with agreeable little interludes in the way of black-mail. In several American newspapers open and undisguised announcements have been published that their columns are to be bought, and that for a price they will advocate any cause or take any side of a disputed question.
But throughout all this there is a great spice of humour, and in the general run of American advertisements it is much to be feared, and only natural to assume, that a stricter code of morality would result in a vast increase of dulness, the general concomitant of prim respectability. Yet it is possible to be wise as well as witty, and even now a good percentage of American advertisers prove this. From these we shall endeavour to select our stock, and so give all the humour without intruding the unpleasantness, except where it is absolutely necessary for the purpose of giving a fair idea of the American system. A good instance of ingenuity is that of the grocer in Pennsylvania, who on the fence of a graveyard inscribed in large white letters, “Use Jones’s bottled ale if you would keep out of here.” Grave subjects are often chosen as opportunities for advertising, one thing frequently offered being “Port wine as pure as the tears which fall upon a sister’s grave.” A firm engaged in the “statuary line” state that “those who buy tombstones of us look with pride and satisfaction upon the graves of their friends;” and from a large upholstery establishment the