during the early part of my career as a bill-
sticker. But bill-sticking—the advertiser's
Magna Charta—should be out of date. I am
come to abolish it. I look upon bill-sticking,
and the announcements in the advertising
columns of newspapers and magazines, as
representing a mere stone age in the art of
publicity. My attention has been called to the
fact that sailors find in the drift innumerable
flint stones, with which, for want of better
knives, thousands of years ago men cut their
corns and carved their mutton. Why the flints
float and where they are drifting to, I am not
aware; but the present drift of my remark is,
that the generality of bill-sticking is as many
thousand years behind Me as shaving with
pebbles is behind shaving with razors. Julius
Caesar Richards, in the few years he has given
to the exercise of genius, accomplished the
labour of many centuries. Happy the peoples
who shall now understand all that he wants to
do for them, and let him do it.

I mean to do it all Myself. All applications
to be made direct to Me. I am for no Boards
of Directors, no promoting of a Sublime and
Practical Sublunar Publicity Company. There
is no limit to My responsibilities. I will teach
any man how to play the Trumpet of Fame, and
guarantee him perfect in two lessons. But he
must play tunes of my composing, or study as
a composer in my school.

What, I ask, can be more rude and barbarous
than that the inventor, say of a pair of cheap
trousers, should placard his triumph upon
transitory hoardings, or cause it to be announced
upon some dreary expanse of dead wall, or cast
it among blacking-bottles, coals, and what not,
in the desolate and unfrequented back garden
which is annexed to the inhabited part of a
newspaper? I need not say that I allude to what are
called, look us anon, the advertising columns.
I answer, Nothing.

Now—

The distance from the eyes to the mouth
is in a well-grown adult two inches and a half,
in a child less. It is calculated that there are
made annually in this country one billion three
hundred and seventeen million eight hundred
and ninety-six thousand seven hundred and
sixty-four buns. These buns are eaten by the
tailor-employing classes; the classes by whom
tailors are not employed being so little addicted
to them, that it was considered a mark of
particular ignorance in Madam Pumpadoor to ask,
when told that the poor could not get bread,
why they did not get buns. On a calculation of
averages drawn from six thousand four hundred
and ten cases, it is found that the average
number of mouthfuls taken during the consumption
of a bun by mastication is, in round numbers
and semicircular bites, seven. In consequence
of the cohesive doughiness of the bun substance,
each morsel remains in the mouth for a
considerable time, and the intervals between the
seven journeys taken by the bun on the way to
the mouth are wholly occupied by the prudent
consumer in careful observation, with a view to
the discovery of legs of cockroaches, pieces of
grit, and other substances known to be occasionally
embedded in its texture.

Well, sir, I command that there shall be
stamped upon all the buns in the three kingdoms
the pattern of the trousers to be advertised, with
the name and address of their maker written
down their legs, say Larkins, Ninety-nine and
a half, Berkeley-square. What is the
consequence? Instead of advertising on the walls of
such a public way as Goswell-street or Pudding-
lane, E. C., I send the advertisement of those
trousers into every man's private Pudding-lane.
Other ways he may not know, or he may be
inattentive to what passes upon them; but the
way to his mouth every man—it is said even the
blind—can see, and to whatever passes on that
road he pays always particular attention. Very
well then, every advertisement travelling upon
that road comes, at a distance of only three
inches, most immediately and literally under a
man's eyes. I have not overlooked the fact that,
in this particular instance, I say let there be
stamped trousers and the name of the trousers-
maker upon all the buns, although the greater
number of the buns are eaten by ladies, who are
not supposed to need the article thus advertised.
The incongruity would fix attention, and ensure
the diffusion of many statements and remarks
from those lips to which men and trouser-buyers
most willingly listen.

It might appear, at first sight, that it would be
more desirable to place advertisements upon the
captains and Abernethy biscuits, because their
hardness compels the consumer to take double
time over them. Of course they are to be placed
there, but careful inquiry has disclosed the
important fact that of one thousand six hundred
and seventy-one persons who have been
interrogated on the subject, one thousand five
hundred and eighty-six admit that, without
exactly knowing why they do so, they are in the
habit of smashing or breaking up a captain's
biscuit before they begin to eat it. Biscuits
usually eaten in this manner will, under my
régime, be covered with repetitions of an
advertisement small in size; as well-executed
miniatures of a blacking-bottle, or a boot, or a watch,
with the name of the watch, boot, or blacking-
maker so repeated that it might enter the mouth
on every fragment not too closely approaching
to the nature of a crumb.

But of course my system, so far as it consists
in forcing the world to swallow every advertiser's
statement on the subject of the wares he has to
sell, is not supported wholly upon biscuits and
buns. No, sir. I shall take contracts for
advertisements on the sponge cakes, on the cocked-
hats, round the edges of the open tarts, and so
forth. I shall issue forms of moulds in which
alone confectioners will be allowed to make the
creams and jellies ordered of them for dinners
and supper parties. Thus no jelly shall appear
upon a festive board without taking thither some
piece of information, as, that A. B. of——has
succeeded in importing a Pure Natural Sherry
at seven and ninepence a dozen, duty paid; or