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day when Sam Coulter, the sexton, had it opened, in hope of raising sport with his rat-terrier.

As, whilst they were in the vestry consulting, and getting instructed for the ordeal, it was found a crowd of the unregenerate ones of Knockagar had assembled outside the church, with the certain intention of giving the Bachelors of Braggy a warm reception when they should emerge, one bachelor less, the minister advised that the wedding be postponed for an hour for peace' sake and theirs. Sarah Bell Baskin agreed to the wisdom of this.

But Peter was in no amiable mood. "I tell ye what it is, Sarah Bell Baskin," said he; "either this merriage is to be now or niver. it'll be now; an' it'll be NIVER ! her decision.

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If it's to be now, if it's to be niver, Then he paused for

"Then let it be now," said Sarah Bell Baskin.

And by taking across the fields with his bride, the strategical Peter disappointed the rascals who, for a full hour after, were keeping a reception warm outside the church gate.

Richard had read Sarah Bell aright when he said he did not consider her "quate" enough for him. Richard proved this experimentally. Paul discovered it. Peter, alas, discovered it. It took three days to bring it home to them with force. Sarah Bell herself,

with the material aid of a three-legged stool, supplied the necessary force. In a week the peace of the Lowry household was irretrievably wrecked, and most of the crockery ware, and the more portable articles of furniture also, and Richard's right arm, and Paul's dental assortment, and poor Peter's head.

In three weeks Sarah Bell Baskin, leaving them her left-handed blessing, took her hundred pounds and her departure, and returned to the house of her father.

On the night after she left, the three brothers sat around the fire, smoking in turn. And after a long silence Peter spoke. He was severely looking at Richard, who cowered. Peter said,

"Now, that chapture 's over an' done with (from the depth o' me sowl God be thankit!); an' let us hopelet us hope we 'll niver again hear another such schame."

"Niver!" said Paul emphatically. "Niver, we hope!" and he gazed at Richard with a sidelong look of scathing rebuke.

Poor Richard looked into the fire and heaved a sigh.

Uncomplainingly he again took up his household duties next morning. And though, henceforth, one of them was a grass widower, they still carried their old title of the Bachelors of Braggy.

Seumas MacManus.

THE HUMORS OF ADVERTISING.

My friend, Antonio Ciccone, the eminent confettatore of Little Italy, used often to invite me to put his picture in the paper. "You put peech in pape," he would

66 cry. Beega peech! Senda man, beega machine. You say, 'Antonio Ciccone, molto religioso, molto caritatevole, besta man.'" And by this I know

Antonio for a very perfect advertiser - of that grandest type, the Homeric. He had the splendid Greek conception of the route to reputation; instead of suffering the world to pronounce upon his merits, he would pronounce upon

them himself. He no more craved to see himself as others saw him than did

Achilles; like Achilles, he desired only that others might see him somewhat as he saw himself.

Now I confess that I have loved Antonio for the boasts he has made. Many a man, finding himself no whit less great than that charming modern ancient of Little Italy, is nevertheless so grievously hemmed in by the caution of his convictions, that he garbs his pride in the staid habiliments of modesty. Such may be dear good souls, and fit for a thousand things, but they will play an ill hand at advertising. Let them learn from Ciccone; also from my gifted fellow townsman, Mr. Joe Chapple, who, frank and unafraid, thus buoyantly declares himself in the public prints:

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"Do you know Joe Chapple, the boy the boy who came out of the West almost penniless, and has built up a National magazine? Do you know Joe Chapple, the man who gained his knowledge of human nature on the bumpers of freight trains; trading an old gray horse for his first printing-press; a printer's devil at twelve, an editor at sixteen, through all phases of social life, up to an invited guest on presidential trains, and as special representative at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey? Presidents, Members of the Cabinet, Supreme Court Judges, Diplomats, United States Senators, Congressmen, and Governors know Joe Chapple. They speak of his work, and they write for his magazine when no other publication on earth can entice them. It is n't because Chapple is brilliant that he has won this national reputation for himself and his magazine, it's his quaint originality, his homelike, wholesome goodnature that permeates all he writes. There's nothing published to-day like The National Magazine - because there is no one just like Joe Chapple."

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Himself he

than a tithe of his valor. sings, myself I dare not sing. And again I am put to shame by the illustrious English confectioner, who, having trodden the summits of conscious success, exclaims, "I am the Toffee King! I have given to England a great national candy, and I am now offering to America the same Toffee that has made me so famous abroad. Does America propose to welcome me,

to welcome a candy that is so pure that any mother can recommend it to her child? The answer is, Yes, by all means!'" As further, though scarce clearer, evidence of the Homeric temper, both Mr. Chapple and the Toffee King have achieved the glowing ideal of Antonio Ciccone: they have "peech in pape."

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Yet I would not be misunderstood; I bring no slenderest charge of vanity against those valiant modern Hellenes. Pasteur accepted learned degrees and decorations, not as honors to himself, but as tributes to his beloved France; and thus devotedly, beyond doubt, do Mr. Chapple and the Toffee King lay their laurels upon the respective altars of their very worthy enterprises. For what work comes to its fullest and best in this faithless world of ours, if it be not haloed round with the splendor of a commanding personality? The worker is or so men fancy - the measure and the limit of the work. Magnify the worker, and in so doing you magnify the work. Look where you will, you shall find the producer acquiring what luminosity he can, that the product may thence take profit. Does he paint? He capriciously dyes his white hair black, save one lock only, which he ties with a jaunty ribbon; he hales unappreciative critics to court; seeing a picture called Carnation, Lily Lily, Rose, he exclaims, "Darnation silly, silly pose,' a quotable saying, if you stop to think of it; and the fame of that painter, going out through all the earth, adds to high art the fine resonance of personal

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notoriety. Men laugh, but they buy. Has he a realm to rule, a realm made up of many petty kingdoms, each vain in its own conceit? He declaims the mediæval doctrine of "divine right," claps scoffers in jail, and — thanks to a long-drawn process of audacious and fantastic meddling with literature, art, music, the drama, surgery, yachting, and theology— quite dims the effulgence of local princelings by becoming incomparably the most talked-of individual in all his empire. Men laugh, but they yield. Has he books to sell? Assuming the cast mantle of a famous craftsman, the name of a jovial monk, the unshorn locks of a poet, and the tripod of an oracle, he preaches a new and strange gospel, and with unquestionable good taste permits the portrait of his son, "food, principally grape-nuts," to be printed as an advertisement, which, of course, is just what Frà Pandolf, or the elder Kean, or the Cumaan Sibyl, or the lamented William Morris himself would have done. Men laugh, but they buy. There's money in personality, be it never so whimsical, and to that blazing star the commercial go-cart may very prudently be hitched. Madame Yale, the brilliant lecturer; Max Régis, the bold, bad duelist; John Alexander Dowie, the reincarnated prophet, - these and a thousand others have grasped the blessed truth that personal publicity can be minted, with only the slightest difficulty, into pecuniary success. "Peech in pape" is pelf in purse.

And yet, for obvious reasons, the most delicious type of personal advertising, the. matrimonial, unfortunately denies the "pape" the "peech." Oh, for a single photographic glimpse of the little lady of Yokohama who thus lyrically declares herself:

“I am a beautiful woman. My abundant, undulating hair envelopes me as a cloud. Supple as a willow is my waist. Soft and brilliant is my visage as the satin of the flowers. I am endowed with wealth sufficient to saunter through life

hand in hand with my beloved. Were I to meet a gracious lord, kindly, intelligent, well educated, and of good taste, I would unite myself with him for life, and later share with him the pleasure of being laid to rest eternal in a tomb of pink marble.”

But methinks-and this I say because I have seen the hill-town folk of New England elaborately gulled through nibbling at matrimonial advertisements

the almond-eyed enchantress was perhaps a wee trifle less charming in person than in pretense. Great Homer nods, at times; also the Homeric advertiser.

But to brandish testimonials, with portraits of important witnesses, and thus to "let another praise thee and not thine own mouth," is ingeniously to remove the discussion from the Homeric, or poetic, to the Aristotelian, or logical, realm. One's "loving friends". for, and in consideration of, value received — stand forth as witnesses. When Mr. W. T. Stead, fresh from his advocacy of Mr. Wilde the astrologer, proclaims Mr. Pelman, the mender of memories, a noble "benefactor of the human race," or when a "cousin of Wm. J. Bryan" proves, by the healthful lustre of his photograph, that Tierney's Tiny Tablets have made him whole, the great purpose is quite satisfactorily attained, and meanwhile Citizens Pelman, Wilde, and Tierney have lost nothing of their reputation for modest stillness and humility. This ingenious cat's-paw device plucks many a precious chestnut out of the fire; to quote a single commodity, the sale of proprietary medicines is directly proportionate to the quantity and blatancy of the advertising they get, which proves the effectiveness of testimonials to a nicety. Moreover — and this, I grieve to say, is a point most advertisers overlook the testimonial admits of almost infinite adaptation. For instance, when President Harper, in an admirably sane and tempered address, observes that students successfully prepared for college by correspondence in

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stitutes are invariably possessed of courage and application, that deliverance of his is jubilantly pounced upon by a dozen correspondence schools of the baser sort (imagine an institution, which, in crying up its course in the art of conversation, says, "You admire the party who you hear spoken of as 'Don't he use elegant language?'"), and, by a skillful derangement of context, the original dictum becomes President Harper's avowal that nothing short of pedagogical absent treatment can possibly inculcate courage and application! And when an insatiable moral reformer once so far divested himself of prudence as to call a certain vaudeville theatre "absolutely above reproach, clean, wholesome, uplifting," the theatrical proprietor, with a delicate appreciation of commercial values, had the reformer's benediction quite exquisitely engrossed and framed and hung up in the foyer of his theatre; and from that very day diverged from the paths of rectitude. Truly a blithe situation: within, a jubilee of vanities, without, a certificate of ethical impeccability! And again, I have seen a reverend apostle of temperance mischievously trapped into indorsing a patent medicine chiefly compounded of spirits of wine. Indeed, this whole business of sponsoring other men's goods should be carefully marked with bell-buoys, which night and day should cry, "Shoal-'ware shoal!"

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But I find that a printed testimonial, even when got by fair means and employed with good conscience, nevertheless lacks the convincing fervor of viva voce pleadings. And the spoken word, to persuade, need not fully convince. I think it was Sainte-Beuve who said of Lacordaire's preaching, "Though it fails to convince, it does a better thing; it charms." And the Lacordaire of advertising is the sweetly persuasive "barker." When such an one cries, "Right inside, gepmen see the royal Bengal tigerfifteen feet from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail-fifteen feet from the tip

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of his tail to the tip of his nose - making in all the e-normious length of forty feet-only ten cents, gepmen, the tenth part of a dollar," I tarry not long at the gate. But when, on the other hand, a uniformed Ethiopian - barking not gently, as befits so tender a matter, but brazenly, bluntly, and without joy in his barking hales me into Black's Dental Parlors, I cannot overmaster a certain vague shrinking of spirit. The appeal lacks charm, whereas even forceps and rubber dam may, by a subtler and more delicate order of barking, be made absolutely alluring. In England, where this delicate art has come to its finest flower, a dentist secretly hires a viscount to commend him to his friends, thus adorning the abhorred service with the dignity of illustrious patronage and the seductiveness of sympathetic suggestion; for a viscount will bark you as gently as any sucking dove.

Sometimes, however, you may drive squarely at the point, and, without recourse to self-laudation or purchased praises, offer the susceptible public a tempting taste of your wares. This, the empirical method, jumps with the modern scientific tendency. Ethically, also, it unfailingly commends itself, for "Sample bottle free" bespeaks plain dealing. Nor is this all. The open cages of the circus parade will most exquisitely tantalize the zoological passions; and appetizing extracts, gratuitously published, whet interest in a forthcoming work of humor. Thus I read, "We 're an honest people,' said Mr. Hennessy. We are,' said Mr. Dooley, 'but we don't know it;'" or again, "Once upon a time there was a Brilliant but Unappreciated Chap who was such a Thorough Bohemian that Strangers usually mistook him for a Tramp. Every Evening he ate an imitation Dinner, at a forty-cent Table d'Hôte, with a Bottle of Writing Fluid thrown in," and two new volumes (without which no gentleman's library is complete) appear forthwith upon my

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eye for an eye.' Scene 3. Interior of the Bucket of Blood Saloon. Playing for high stakes. Come and take them if you dare!' Act V. Scene 1. Interior of Don Pedro's Ranch, Red-Handed Bill and Barney. Scene 2. Heart of the Rockies. The marriage ceremony. Terrific knife fight on horseback between Red-Handed Bill and Nebraska Jim. At last!' Act VI. Parlor in Don Pedro's Ranch. The threat. Timely arrival of the Cattle King. Carlotta's confession. Bob and Kate happy." And, as if this were not enough, the promoter of melodramas declares that “ the

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fight in the Bucket of Blood Saloon makes a weekly expense equal to the entire salary list of some companies."

bookshelf. When Artemus Ward, then wholly unknown, papered Boston with handbills, which, without mention of time or place, said simply, "A. Ward Will Speak a Piece," and when, later in his career, his poster proclaimed "A. WARD HAS LECTURED BEFORE THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE ever thought of lecturing," he gave, so to speak, an earnest of levity. Out in Cleveland, the curator of an historical museum, calling my attention to an antiquated desk and chair, said, "Those pieces of furniture, sir, once belonged to Charles Browne, known to the world as Artemus Ward. Lacked balance!" So he did breakage of costly bricabrac during the thank God! but not as an advertiser. Now from the ridiculous to the sublime 't is many a step, and it is not without a momentary shock to my finer sensibilities that I find the solemn and awful melodrama of "Red-Handed Bill, the Hair Lifter of the Far South-West" adapting to its blood-curdling purposes the frivolous advertising methods invented by an "exhibitor of fine waxworks and 3 moral bears." The promoter of melodrama publishes a synopsis of the impending "sensational representation," thus scattering, as it were, a largess of shudders, which, for generosity at least, fully equals Ward's largess of laughter. Read here the synopsis, and tremble! "Act I. A Mountain Pass in the Rockies. In pursuit. Kate saved by the Cattle King. The assault of Red-Handed Bill and his Brazen Bandits. Avaunt! This lady is under my protection.' Act II. Golden Gulch and exterior of the Bucket of Blood Saloon. The rustic lover. Bob accused of horse stealing. The struggle and capture of the Cattle King. Coward, I'll do for you yet!' Act III. A Mountain Gorge. The captives. Preparing for death. The equine friend to the rescue of his master. 'Saved!' Act IV. Scene 1. Don Pedro's Ranch. RedHanded Bill's Visit. The attack. Scene 2. Bob and the Irishman. 'An menageries.

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In advertising wild animal shows, where one's animals are too few to permit the open-cage extravagance, and the admission fee outweighs a barker's persuasiveness, still creepier pronunciamentos are desirable. You remember Mr. Janvier's story, A Consolate Giantess, and how the lady - widowed, again widowed, and then widowed twice more, and for the fourth time remarried cried, Ah, if our Neron would again eat a man!" When at last the good Giantess could announce "the terrible man-eating lion, Neron, who has devoured five men," all was indeed well. In fact, in enterprises of this character, no other sort of advertising will long serve. When Bostock's animal show first came to the Pan-American Exposition, its passionate press agent inserted. "want" in the Buffalo papers, shrieking for "fifty mules, quick, to feed the lions." This drew its thousands. Whereupon the press agent, quite losing his head, advertised for "fifty tons of rags to feed the elephants," and was thereupon discharged. Which teaches us how perilous is any departure from the classic, which is the sanguinary, or pseudo-sanguinary, method of crying up

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