I have made many inquiries respecting societies and associations professing to be established with the benevolent object of assisting ladies to dispose of their handiwork, either artistic or needlework, and I have come to the conclusion that, however well such advertisements may read, they are to be accepted with caution. I should advise none of you to send any article or to put down any annual subscription to any such societies unless they have a working committee of people whose names carry weight and issue a properly-audited balance-sheet annually. Many of these sort of things are stated, perhaps without any intention of fraud, but without the power of commanding a sale or sufficient means in the background to find the rent and other expenses, or perhaps lacking the necessary business aptitude on the part of the promoters. They go on for a while, and then too often suddenly collapse. The goods, if returned at all, are mostly much the worse for wear, and, as a matter of course, the entrance fee is sacrificed.
But perhaps some of you girls have literary talents, and desire to publish tales or essays, poems, or whatever else you are able to produce. If so, send them to well-established periodicals or country newspapers. Do not be discouraged by failure. Many a good article rejected over and over again has appeared in print and laid the foundation for a literary career. Let your copy be clear, carefully written on one side of the paper only, and the matter something about which you have some specific knowledge. Few well-established publications need to advertise for contributors, and it certainly is not necessary for you, a tyro in the art, to subscribe towards the publishing of a magazine in which your productions are to appear. Few such publications would have the faintest chance of success under such auspices.
It might, under exceptional circumstances, when needlework is ordered, be necessary to deposit a few shillings as a guarantee that the materials sent to you will be duly returned or paid for; but if your writings require a deposit of any kind to get them read or published, the waste-paper basket is the best place for them, however highly you may yourself value them. Literature, after all, is a very open market, and fresh blood is always needed, though it may be a difficult matter to get your first step on the ladder. “Try, and if you don’t succeed, try, try, try again,” is the very best advice, but don’t subscribe to any association which offers even the most tempting terms to publish in any magazine issued by the joint subscriptions of amateur authors. Nor do not be tempted by offers of introductions to publishers for a consideration. Attack the publishers yourself, without any intermediary. No paid one will help you. I was asked to subscribe to something of the kind not long ago, and among the advantages the subscription was to give me was the power to try for the acrostic and other prizes offered by a well-known weekly paper, which was open to everybody.
If as much ingenuity were employed in securing honest work as we find in these bogus advertisements, the perpetrators, I think, would be much better off. The addresses change so frequently, applicants are so deluged with printed testimonials, that they are the more easily gulled. Sometimes the advertisers are obliged at last to send something in return for the money. One Everett May, for example, who for eighteenpence undertook to teach how to earn four guineas a week. For a time he would declare that the packet was posted, and must have been lost in transit, but after a long correspondence and constant demands for more money, if very hard pressed, something arrived, as, in one case, a last, a small boot for a child, and a few pieces of leather, from which it would be impossible to make a fellow boot, and a note concluding with, “As soon as we receive from you a specimen equal to pattern we shall be glad to afford you constant employment.” Another advertisement offered to gentlemen in a respectable circle of acquaintance the means of increasing their incomes, and on receipt of thirty stamps advised the purchase of a cwt. of potatoes for 4s., a basket, and 2s. worth of flannel, to have half the quantity of potatoes baked nightly, put them in the basket well wrapped in flannel, sell them at a 1d. each, and so earn £2 a week.
Perhaps some of you girls may be attracted by the advertisements which seek for a depôt where some everyday article may be sold, and if you are in a position in which such a sale at home is possible you may, perhaps with a good deal of trouble, make a little money in that way. Such advertisements are far more bonâ fide, I expect, than £2 and upwards offered by certain firms to persons of either sex without hindrance to present occupation. To any girls about to have recourse to these, my advice would be like that of Albert Smith to those about to marry—“Don’t.”
Just now the word competitions occupy many advertisements in the newspapers. I counted fourteen different addresses in one number. The amount offered in prizes is tempting, and those of my friends who have competed have found the promoters apparently fair dealing. But it is not easy to obtain a prize, and the shilling paid by each competitor is, I expect, the most important point to the advertiser.
One other class of advertisement I am about to touch upon, viz., the fortune-telling ones. Seeing the penalties the advertisers lay themselves open to, it is wonderful that they appear at all. If any of you send your shilling in the hope of obtaining your horoscope or any revelation as to your future life, based on the information you furnish as to your height, colour of hair, eyes, and date of birth, even supposing you receive any reply at all, you will very surely have wasted your money. None of these folks know any more of your future than The Home Philosopher, and if I could tell the future, I should know what stocks were going to rise, and what horse will win the next Derby, and thereby make more money in a week than the fortune-tellers, if they had ten lives. Depend on it, if they could they would do the same.
Ardern Holt.
THE ROMANCE OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND;
OR,
THE OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET.
By EMMA BREWER.