CURIOUS AUTOMATIC STORIES.

Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

CURIOUS AUTOMATIC STORIES.

An English firm has supplied the streets with convenient apparatus where school children can buy chocolate sticks and butternuts by dropping a penny in an open siifc. London is filled with these shops, and they are found everywhere in Great Britain. America has the automatic scales by which one can weigh himself by dropping a o-eent pieoe in a little hole; bnfc the Englishmen has extended this device, so now tbf* children on t.he street can stop at the corner, drop in a penny, and a little drawer will fly out, and in it you fiud a cake of chocolate or a piece of butterscotch. The desire is regulated by the place wherein the copper is deposited. To the right for chocolate, to the 'left for butterscotch. Nor are the children the only ones cared for. The dude cau drop in a penny at a certain box aud out will come a cigarette. What a boon for an improverished dude with only ono cent, but who is too proud to go into a cigar shop and ask for one cigarette ' By this device he is relieved of all impertinent looks or knowing smiles by the self sufficient tobacconist, for lie has only to face an iron frame which gladly responds to his trifling copper. The proprietor of these automatic apparatuses knows, also, how often a pedestrian or traveller wauts a sheet of paper and envelope, or' a, postal card, and ho has a number of stands filled with stamped envelopes, containing a sheet of paper, which fall into the hands of a purchaser, who deposits 2 pence, or a postal card on a receipt of a penny. Automatic scales seem to have found their way to the Continent, but aa yet England enjoys the monopoly of the automatic shopkeeper.