CHAPTER XX. ADVERSARIA.

name, in this country many, many years ago, as we have already shown, but that they are again coming into fashion. But the “puff-pars” of old England—which may fairly be represented by those which emanated from the establishment of Rowland, the Kalydor man, in his palmy days of advertising—were always clumsy when compared with those réclames we have been studying, it being impossible, apparently, to make a British advertiser understand that an advertisement is more valuable in proportion as it looks less like what it really is. The cloven foot always shows forth under the wrapper of fine words; and when we say this, we do not refer to the paragraphs written in odonto or ointment establishments by young men at a pound a week, who are bound to put so many hard words in a line, and keep their productions within the compass of so many lines, whether syntax is agreeable or not; but to the friendly and more able notices which now and again find their way into some daily and weekly papers. The réclame, in its best form, is a highly-cultivated flower—an exotic, in fact—and is at present a little over the heads of the advertising public, who like to see plenty for money.