The Jew clothing-stores present the most marvelous fertility of invention in this style of advertising. Bills are posted all over the doorways, in the windows, on the pavements, and on the various articles of clothing hung up for sale. He who runs may read:
“Now or Never! Cheapest coats in the world!! Pants given away!!! WALK IN, GENTS.”
And so on without limit. New clothes and clothes doubtful are offered for sale at these prolific establishments, which are always selling off at cost or suicidal prices, yet never seem to be reduced in stock. I verily believe I saw hanging at the door of one of these shops the identical pair of stockings stolen from me several years ago at Strawberry.
Drinking establishments being rather numerous, the competition in this line of business gives rise to a very persuasive and attractive style of advertising. The bills are usually printed in florid and elaborately gilt letters, and frequently abound in pictures of an imaginative character. “Cosy Home,” “Miner’s Retreat,” “Social Hall,” “Empire,” “Indication,” “Fancy-Free,” “Snug,” “Shades,” etc., are a few of the seductive names given to these places of popular resort; and the announcements are generally followed by a list of “choice liquors” and the gorgeous attractions of the billiard department, together with a hint that Dick, Jack, Dan, or Jerry “is always on hand, and while grateful for past favors will spare no pains to merit a continuance of the same. By catering to the public taste he hopes to make his house in the future, as it has been in the past, a real Home for the Boys!” Nice homes these, and a nice family of boys that will come out of them! Where will they live when they grow to be men? A good idea it was to build a stone penitentiary.
“Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!”
“Auction Sales Every Day!”
This is another form of advertisement for a very prolific branch of trade. Day and night auctions are all the rage in Virginia as in San Francisco. Everything that can’t go any other way, and many things that can, go by auction. Stocks, horses, mules, boots, groceries, tinware, drugs and medicines, and rubbish of all kinds are put in flaming bills and auctioned off to the highest bidder for cash. “An’af! an’af! an’af! shall I have it?” is a part of the language popularly spoken on the principal streets.
A cigar store not much bigger than a dry-goods box must have its mammoth posters out over the town and hill-sides, displaying to the public eye the prodigious assortments of Regalias, Principes, Cheroots, etc., and choice brands of “Yellow-leaf,” “Honey-dew,” “Solace,” and “Eureka,” to be had within the limits of their cigar and tobacco emporium. If Archimedes were to rush from the solace of a bath and run naked through the streets of Virginia, shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” it would merely be regarded as a dodge to dispose of an invoice of Fine-Cut.
Quack pills, sirups, tonics, and rectifiers stare you in the face from every mud-bank, rock, post, and corner, in red, black, blue, and white letters; in hieroglyphics, in cadaverous pictures of sick men, and astounding pictures of well men.
Every branch of trade, every conceivable species of amusement, is forced upon the public eye in this way. Bill-posting is one of the fine arts. Its professors are among the most notable characters in Virginia. They have a specific interest in certain corners, boards, boxes, and banks of earth and rock, which, with the brush and pot of paste, yield them a handsome revenue. To one who witnesses this bill-mania for the first time the effect is rather peculiar. He naturally imagines that the whole place is turned inside out. Every man’s business fills his eye from every point of view, and he cannot conceive the existence of a residence unless it be that where so much of the inside is out some portion of the outside may be in. With the exception of the silver mines this is, to a casual observer, an inverted city, and may well claim to be a city of anomalies.
I had occasion, during my stay, to avail myself of the services of a professional bill-sticker. For the sum of six dollars he agreed to make me notorious. The bills were printed in the approved form: “A Trip to Iceland,” etc. Special stress was given to the word “Iceland,” and my name was printed in extravagantly conspicuous letters. In the course of a day or two I was shocked at the publicity the Professor of Bill-Posting had given me. From every rock, corner, dry-goods box, and awning post; from every screen in every drinking saloon, I was confronted, and browbeaten by my own name. I felt disposed to shrink into my boots. Had anybody walked up to me and said, “Sir, you are a humbug!” it would have been an absolute relief. I would have grasped him by the hand, and answered, “I know it, my dear fellow, and honor you for your frankness!” But there was one consolation: I was suffering in company. A lady, popularly known as “The Menken” (the afterwards celebrated actress, Adah Isaacs Menken) had created an immense sensation in San Francisco, and was about to favor the citizens of Virginia with a classical equestrian exhibition entitled “Mazeppa.” She was represented as tied in an almost nude state to the back of a wild horse, which was running away with her at a fearful rate of speed. My friend the Professor was an artist in the line of bill-sticking, and carefully studied effects. He evidently enjoyed Mazeppa. It was a flaming and a gorgeous bill. Its colors were of the most florid character; and he posted accordingly. First came Mazeppa on the mustang horse; then came the Trip to Iceland and myself. If I remember correctly we (that is to say “The Menken” and I) were followed by “Ayer’s Tonic Pills,” “Brown’s Bronchial Troches,” and “A good Square Meal at the Howling Wilderness Saloon.” Well, I suppose it was all right, though it took me rather aback at the first view. If the lady had no reason to complain, it was not for me, an old traveler, to find fault with the bill-sticker for placing me prominently before the public. Perhaps the juxtaposition was unfortunate in a pecuniary point of view; perhaps the citizens of Virginia feel no great interest in icy regions. Be that as it may, never again so long as I live will I undertake to run “Iceland” in the vicinity of a beautiful woman tied to the back of a wild horse.