AMERICAN ADVERTISING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 79, 22 July 1876, Page 2

AMERICAN ADVERTISING.

The Americans are far in advance of us in poetic advertisements, and some examples given by "Harper's Magazine" show that their genius in this line leaves little to be desired. What, for instance, can be more striking than the following blast of a trumpet blown by a tailor in his own honour ?: Oh, come into the garden, Maud, And sit beneath the rose, And see me prance around the beds, Dressed in my Sunday clothes. Oh, come and tiring- your uncles, Maud, Your sisters and your aunts, And tell them Johnson made my coat, My waistcoat and my pants. Again, a tobacconist thus advertises his establishment in the following beautiful stanza : Gaily young- Ferguson bought his cigar, Bought it at Mulligan's where the best are. When he wants a fine cut or snuff for his nose Gaily young Ferguson purchases those. Perhaps, however, for exciting tender and holy emotions, and exalting the soul above "the earth, nothing in modern poetry can be found equal to an advertisement of a provision shop, which runs as follows : Oh say not I love you because the molasses You purchased at Simpson's was golden and clear ; The syrup, the sugar, the jelly in glasses, The crackers, the mack'rels I know were not dear, But when you came to me with Simpson's smoked salmon. And showed me his sample of Limburger cheese, I felt that his claim to be cheap was not gammon ; I loved you, and said so, dear Jane, on my knees. This mingling of poetry and provision supplies a great want, for, as has been truly said by Fuller, "Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound ; both excellent sauce; but they have lived and died poor that made them (their) meat." Poets now-a-days no longer happily depend, like Chatterton, on the smiles of the great, but with grocers for their patrons may grow fat upon song.—"Pall Mall Gazette."