Since the art of reading was unknown to a considerable proportion of the community, it was natural that pictorial devices should be largely used. Not only were the shops along the highways distinguished by such signs as “the Blue Glove,” and “the Golden Keys,” with appropriate illustrations; but in the advertising columns of the papers, the print was re-enforced by pictures of ships and horses, and runaway slaves.
The purchase and sale of negroes formed a standing advertisement, beneath the caption of an auction-block.
In the Virginia Gazette of August, 1767, we find the following under the curious headline:
“Sale of a Musical Slave.”
“A valuable young handsome Negro fellow, about 18 or 20 years of age; has every qualification of a genteel and sensible servant, and has been in many different parts of the world. He shaves, dresses hair, and plays on the French horn. He lately came from London, and has with him two suits of new clothes, which the purchaser may have with him. Inquire at the printing office.”
It is hard to understand why the owner should wish to part with a prodigy possessed of so many accomplishments. Perhaps his playing on the French horn is the explanation.
Runaway servants, both black and white, form the subject of many advertisements in those old newspapers. In the Maryland Gazette (1769) appears a description in rhyme of the disappearance of an indented servant:
“Last Wednesday morn at break of day,
From Philadelphia ran away
An Irishman, named John McKeogn.
To fraud and imposition prone,
About five feet five inches high;
Can curse and swear, as well as lie.
How old he is I can’t engage,
But forty-five is near his age.
“He oft in conversation chatters
Of Scripture and religious matters,
And fain would to the world impart
That virtue lodges in his heart.
But, take the rogue from stem to stern,
The hypocrite you’ll soon discern
“And find, though his deportment’s civil,
A saint without, within a devil.
Whoe’er secures said John McKeogn,
(Provided I should get my own),
Shall have from me in cash paid down
Five dollar bills, and half-a-crown.”
Mary Nelson is the owner and poet, or, in the fashion of the day, I should say poetess, and perhaps owneress, as I find it recorded of Mary Goddard that she was postmistress of Baltimore and Printress and Editress of the Baltimore Journal.
The world moves. The auction-block, and the runaway slave, with his bundle on his back, have disappeared from among the pictures in the advertising column; the packet has given way to the ocean steamer; the horse to the bicycle; the stage coach to the railroad; the little provincial gazettes, with their coarse gray paper and blurred type, to the great dailies, as large as the Bible and as doubtful as the Apocrypha. I wonder if another century will have such astounding tales to tell of progress in news, trade and travel!