HAVE YOU ANYTHING TO SELL?

(_With acknowledgments to "The Daily Mail."_)

Have you anything you think of burning as useless, but would naturally

prefer to sell? Why not try one of our small advertisements? Every day we

receive thousands of letters testifying to their power. Here is one, picked

up at random:--

"Please discontinue my advertisement of a half-pair of bellows and a

stuffed canary, as the first insertion has had such remarkable results. On

looking out of my bedroom window this morning I observed a queue of some

hundreds of people extending from my doorstep down to the trams in the main

road. They included ladies on campstools, messenger boys, a sad-looking

young man in an ulster who was reading SWINBURNE'S poems, and others. Only

with difficulty could the milkman fight his way through to place the can on

the doorstep, and the contents were quickly required to restore a lady who

had turned faint for want of a camp-stool. While I was shaving, a motor

mail-van dashed up and left seven sacks of postal replies to the

advertisement. One by one, eighty-three people were admitted to view the

goods, and a satisfactory bargain was made with the last of these. I then

telephoned for the police to come and remove the disappointed thousands,

who were disposed to be riotous. My garden gate is off its hinges, the

garden itself has the lawn inextricably mixed with the flower-beds, my

marble step is cracked in three places, and my stair-carpet is caked with

mud. I do not know any other paper in this country in which a two-shilling

advertisement could produce such encouraging results."

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Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 · 第 13 / 41 题