WITH BARNUM'S BILL-STICKERS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2745, 15 February 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

WITH BARNUM'S BILL-STICKERS.

:;: • •» ONE HUNDRED FEET OF POSTING IN FOURTEEN MINUTES. We arrived at the Cedars. Opposite to this house is a boarding thirteen feet high by one hundred feet long ; and in a few minutes I w:is to see a feat of bill-posting, suoh-as "seems hardly creditable now that: I sit calmly down to write of it. A waggon having driven up, five men (rot out of it j one I reoosrnieed as Mart Ready, Barnum'n Boss poster; two were Amerioans in their neat duck overalls, and two were English bill-stiokers, whose appearance I would rather not describe. In two minutes after their arrival the duck overall men had out their tin cans full of pnate, and their eight foot long poles with brushes at the end, and were hard at it covering tho hoarding with paste from top to bottom; from end to end. The Englishmen stood with something like sneers on their faoes, an who should eay : " Well, there ain't much in that, we can cover a hoarding with paste too." Another minute paused and Ready began handing out some of those carefully folded posters of whioh I spoke just now. The Englishmen's faces relaxed a HUle, as who should say, " What are they goin' to do now ?" and they began to whisper together. The two Americans seized one of the posters, gave it a shake, ran the brush end of their long poles under it, raised it, gave it a sweep, and there on the hoarding was a 16 sheet poster, containing a facsimile of an open letter from P. T. Barnum, headed •' My Greatest Venture." Then followed a 12 'sheet poster-portrait of Barnum, a 48 sheet, depicting tho show tents as, they travel in America, a 24-flheet picture of Jumbo, a 48-sheet representation of the gallery of human freak 3 of nature, a 36-sheet portrait of the fair Indian snake charmer from the Bowery, New York, a 48-sheet picture of the menagerie, a 36-sheet portrait of the Mexican rider, a 48-sheet representation of the elephants performing, a 24-sheet picture of the clowns, and a 24-sheet portrait of Miss Clara O'Brien, the Roman knffe thrower. All along the tops and the bottoms of the pictures " streamers" wero pasted. The most remarkable fact, however, was that everyone of these huge posters were slung up into position whole —they had been pasted together before starting. The entire' hundred feet by thirteen was covered in exactly fourteen minutes and • thirty seconds ! There ! That is something like billsticking! You ought to have seen the faces of those Englishmen !—Pall Mall Budget.