sensational style: 'Buy Harper's Weekly!'—'Buy Harper's Weekly!'—'Buy Harper's Weekly!'—'Buy Harper's Weekly!'—and so on through the half column. Through his advertising agent he sent this advertisement to the 'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times,' and paid for its insertion. Among the astonished readers of this 'Ledger' style of advertising were the quiet gentlemen who do business on Franklin Square. The community were astonished. 'The Harpers are waking up!' 'This is the Bonner style!' 'This is the way the Ledger man does it!' were heard on all sides. The young Harpers were congratulated by the book men every-where on the enterprise with which they were pushing the new publication. They said nothing, and took the joke in good part. But it settled the respectability of the 'Ledger' style of advertising. It is now imitated by the leading publishers, insurance men, and most eminent dry goods men in the country. The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are perfectly marvelous. He never advertises unless he has something new to present to the public. He pays from five to twenty-five thousand dollars a week when he advertises."
Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth nothing in the end unless he made the "Ledger" worthy of the public patronage, and he exerted himself from the first to secure the services of a corps of able and popular writers. In his arrangements with his contributors, he inaugurated a system of liberality and justness which might well put his rivals to shame.
When Mr. Everett was engaged in his noble effort to assist the ladies of the Mount Vernon Association in purchasing the home and tomb of Washington, Mr. Bonner proposed to him to write a series of papers for the "Ledger," for which he offered him ten thousand dollars, the money to be appropriated to the purchase of Mount Vernon. Mr. Everett accepted the offer, and the celebrated Mount Vernon Papers were the result. This was a far-sighted move on the part of Robert Bonner. Under ordinary circumstances Mr. Everett would probably have declined to