A View of the Americans.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8055, 2 November 1897, Page 4

A View of the Americans.

Mb David Christie Murray, writing of America and the Americans. Bays : — "Nowhere on the surface of this planet, so far as I know, is popular credulity in such contrast with learning and capacity. The newspaper advertisements show you a hundred of the oddest ways of getting a living out of the folly and stupidity of mankind and womankind. The very name of American is with us a synonym for shrewdness and mental agility, and yet a casual glance at the advertising pages of the public prints shows you an abyss of ignorance, credulity, and superstition in which countless creatures of prey are at work on the body of a foolish humanity. Contrast heaps itself on contrast ; strangeness crowds on strangeness. I have just laid down on the table before me a very beautifully printed and illustrated magazine — one of the oheap publications which somehow we have not Been able so far to rival on our own side. 1 find in it a full-page advertisement of a nostrum which is guaranteed to " make the plainest women positively beautiful ; the sickest woman positively healthy." Somebody pays for that, and it is certainly not the advertiser who does so in the last instance. Further on I read in the same pages :— " A beautiful woman must not only possess a clear and brilliant complexion, but must have also a properly-developed bust. No matter how severe your case, write me, and I will make you a proud and happy woman." I wonder how many proud and happy i women owe their pride and happiness to this benefactress of their kind. "Any lady •made to look 15 years younger without charge," is an announcement in another publication now under my eye. An "eye; powder," whatever that may be, is offered to all ladies " who wish to be beautiful."