HUMOURS OF ADVERTISING
America is the fatherland of Modern Advertising, and Cousin Jonathan’s inherent taste for fun and unconventionality has led him to adopt striking and often humorous methods of appeal. Thus the Washington hotel-keeper who issued a glowing announcement of the attractions of his establishment would certainly lose nothing when he humorously added to his advertisement in a Chicago paper: “Clergymen find this the best place for rest, as book agents cannot climb the hill.”
An enterprising Yankee who runs a hotel at Minnetonka, rejoicing in the somewhat ominous name of Mosquitos Rest, sends forth an announcement remarkable for the manner in which it mixes the sublime with the commonplace. Here is a literal extract—
Delightful scenery. Clam bakes and ox tail soup every morning for breakfast. No cyclones allowed to register. Dogs, children, and other pets not allowed on the grass. Rates range from 3 dols. per day to 21 dols. per week. Excursions to Pike’s Peak every afternoon. Newspaper publishers can all pay their board by promising to give us a write-up when they get home. All kinds of baths on draft.
Perhaps the most amusing descent from the sublime is to be found in the advertisement of the proprietor of a building site in Wisconsin, who offered his land for sale in these terms—
The town of Poggis and surrounding country is the most beautiful which nature ever made. The scenery is celestial—divine; also two waggons to sell, and a yoke of steers.
A Pennsylvania clergyman who was evidently a bit of a humorist, and was anxious to earn an honest penny outside of his own slender salary, once advertised thus—
Cupid and Hymen. The little brown cottage at Cambridge, Pa., is the place to call and have the marriage knot promptly and strongly tied. Inquire of Rev. S. S. Whitcomb.
What benedict could resist an invitation so gracefully given?
ROMANCE OF ADVERTISING.
“I wish, mister, you’d be so good as to stop the Press and put this in a good place (reads): ‘Hemily. Don’t delay, but return to yer broken-arted Adolphus, or there’s no knowing what may be the consequence!!!’”
It would be difficult to surpass the grim humour of the Pine Tree State gravestone cutter who notified the public as follows—“Such as buy tombstones of us look with pride and satisfaction upon the graves of their friends.” The announcement of an Illinois undertaker, however, runs it pretty close. Here it is—“An elegant stock of neat and nobby shrouds, warranted to give satisfaction to the most particular.”
The column in American papers devoted to “Wants” frequently affords its readers some amusement, either through the eccentricity of the advertiser or on account of some printer’s error. To the former cause, we have to ascribe the appended notice from a Kansas paper—
Wanted an old man of cranky disposition, who will stand no bull-dozing, to work from 3 to 7 p.m.; good salary and light work. Address “Crank.”
Let’s hope this plain-spoken advertiser met with the desirable un-bull-dozable individual he wanted, and that the firm who inserted the following in a southern paper were likewise successful in their quest for a young man of the same kidney—
Artist Poet. Yes, I consider that to be one of my most brilliant effects. It is entitled “Pirates surprised at sunset.”
Editor. Great Scott! Poor fellows, I don’t wonder they were surprised at it!
We desire an able-bodied, hard-featured, bad-tempered, not-to-be-put-off and not-to-be-backed-down young man, to collect for us; must furnish his own horse, saddle-bags, pistols, bowie knife and cowhide. We will furnish the accounts. To such a person we promise constant and laborious employment.
As to humour arising from printers’ errors, a whole volume of such amusing blunders might be collected, and the difficulty is to submit one or two of the most mirth-provoking specimens. For instance, a Boston clergyman asks for “a young man to take care of a span of horses of a religious turn of mind,” while another person desires “a nurse in a small gentleman’s family,” and a Texas man applies for a “Boss hand over 5,000 sheep that can speak Spanish fluently.” In our home papers, too, there are many such mirthful mistakes. For example, a notice in a Welsh paper would lead one to believe the advertiser had reached the height of “general utility,” and might be used for sleeping in, for packing in, for hammering about, or for storing goods in, and that he had been accustomed to that for seventeen years! Look you now—
Man seeks situation as bedstead, box, packing case, rough carpentry, or warehouse; 17 years’ character.
Apropos of American advertising, two amusing instances of unexpected effects are worth recording. It was a Cincinnati firm who a few years ago sent out a corps of artists who decorated all available dead walls with the legend—
USE DR. BROWN’S AGUE CURE.
A few weeks later another band of paint-brush wielders struck the trail of Dr. Brown’s advertisers, and as the result the rural population was thus advised—
TAKE SMITH’S SARSAPARILLA,
AND YOU WON’T HAVE TO
USE DR. BROWN’S AGUE CURE.
FANCY PORTRAIT—
OLIVER TWIST.
It was in Baltimore where the town was liberally supplied with imperative commands to “Take Ayer’ Pills!” One of these notices was inscribed on the rail of a board fence immediately underneath which some zealous colporteur had appropriated a rail for the admonition, “Prepare to meet your God!” A wag, taking advantage of the situation, connected the two inscriptions with a conspicuous “and,” and thus left them.
The Jap, a slavish imitator of Western customs, has adopted the methods of Western advertisement, although his knowledge of the English language leaves something to be desired. The following is an extract from an announcement of a certain teeth powder sweetly named “Naniwakusurihamigaki,” which appeared in an Anglo-Japanese periodical—“This Teeth Powder is not common thing, as be selled in the world, it is powerful to hold the health of teeth, and recover the teeth from its sick. If you only examine you should find that I never tell a lie.”
A FACT!
Little Quiller has a great idea of the dignity of literature as a profession, as also of its professors generally—Quiller particularly. He has submitted a large parcel of MS. to a publisher for approval, and calls to ascertain the result.
Publisher (loq.). Hoh! Mr. Quiller? Yes, sir, I’ve not read your stuff, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll take it on spec, and toss you—sudden death—ten bob or nothin’ for it!
[Poor little Quiller
Indian native journals published in what is alleged to be English, but what is better described as “Baboo,” also afford many examples of the humours of advertising. Let us take one specimen which appeared in the original surmounted with the Royal Arms—
I the undersigned obedient monk and Tomb’s slave of Khaja Mainudin Chishti emporor of India inhabitant of Ajmere most humbly beg to every one gentleman, that if anybody might be suffering with demon, fairy, magic and fury, from any long time, or any sort of patient, who cannot be cure by any sort of medical treatment, they should attend at Mote Bazar in Memon Kader Fakir Mohomed’s house No. 383 from 6 to 12 a.m. and 3 to 5 p.m. all the abovementioned patients will be cure by pronouncing some words and blowing upon water, spiting and amulet, by the grace of the Almighty Creator.
If anybody is suffering with weakness and privacy in eyes, they will be cure by the medicine.
If anybody wishes to take examination for the above mentioned questions, the undersigned can answer for his any question very easily and several times the undersigned was made contrast with great enchanter in Calcutta at Kalighat and in Malbar, but by the grace of God Kaja saket the undersigned has been successful upon them.
Some days ago the undersigned was in Calcutta, and he cure there lots of patients by the grace of God, which was related by the Calcutta Newspapers, hoping several gentlemen might be known by reading the Calcutta newspapers, and the late Governor General Lord Ripon were very kind on the undersigned on account of above mentioned abilities, and many times I had been visited with them in Calcutta and Shamla, and surely nobody will return hopeless from the door of Khaja Mainudin Chishti emporor of India by the grace of God.
The following notice appended for the benefit of local English residents to the announcement of a masked ball at Lorenço Marques, also deserves a place among these specimens of the Humours of Advertising—
A great Mascared Ball!
it will take place at Ultramarino Hotel in the 16th of instant
all the mascareds must be in respectible conditions
Mascareds witt religions or politic dresses are not allone
The tikets can be obtaine at Messrs. Rodrigues & Cunha and alco
in the same Evening at the Ultramarino Hotel
Price of the tikets 4/6. Free for the mascared ladies.
Let us go to the Ball.
Locke on the Human
Understanding.
A glance at the business life of the far East shows us that out there Western customs are steadily gaining ground, although in that queer land of China nothing appears to be new, for long, long ago they advertised their shops with sign-boards inscribed after this fashion—“Shop of Heaven-sent Luck,” “The Shop of Celestial Principles,” “The Nine Felicities Prolonged,” “Mutton Shop of Morning Twilight,” “The Ten Virtues all Complete.” Here you have poetry and business combined, while in “The Honest Pen Shop of Li,” you have a guarantee that your pens will follow the best policy, although the shopman’s name is just a wee bit suspicious. John Chinaman shows his love of contrariness surely when he advertises a charcoal shop as the “Fountain of Beauty,” a coal depôt as “Heavenly Embroidery,” or an oil and wine establishment as the “Neighbourhood of Chief Beauty,” and we can easily imagine the fiendish chuckle with which the proprietor of an opium divan advertised his shop as “The Thrice Righteous.”