"But," said the canvasser, "this will help you to run it better. You will know twice as much when you get through."
"No, boss, no, dat's just it," returned Wash. "Don't want to learn nothing, boss," he said. "Why, boss, I know more now than I git paid for."
There was one New York newspaper that prided itself on its huge circulation, and its advertising canvassers were particularly insistent in securing the advertisements of publishers. Of course, the real purpose of the paper was to secure a certain standing for itself, which it lacked, rather than to be of any service to the publishers.
By dint of perseverance, its agents finally secured from one of the ten-cent magazines, then so numerous, a large advertisement of a special number, and in order to test the drawing power of the newspaper as a medium, there was inserted a line in large black type:
"SEND TEN CENTS FOR A NUMBER."
But the compositor felt that magazine literature should be even cheaper than it was, and to that thought in his mind his fingers responded, so that when the advertisement appeared, this particular bold-type line read:
"SEND TEN CENTS FOR A YEAR."
This wonderful offer appealed with singular force to the class of readers of this particular paper, and they decided to take advantage of it. The advertisement appeared on Sunday, and Monday's first mail brought the magazine over eight hundred letters with ten cents enclosed "for a year's subscription as per your advertisement in yesterday's —." The magazine management consulted its lawyer, who advised the publisher to make the newspaper pay the extra ninety cents on each subscription, and, although this demand was at first refused, the proprietors of the daily finally yielded. At the end of the first week eight thousand and fifty-five letters with ten cents enclosed had reached the magazine, and finally the total was a few over twelve thousand!
XIV.
Last Years in New York