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    EDINBURGH JOURNAL
    BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS



    CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

    CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
    INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.


    No. 434. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._




    PUFF AND PUSH.


    It is said that everything is to be had in London. There is truth
    enough in the observation; indeed, rather too much. The conviction
    that everything is to be had, whether you are in want of it or not, is
    forced upon you with a persistence that becomes oppressive; and you
    find that, owing to everything being so abundantly plentiful, there is
    one thing which is _not_ to be had, do what you will, though you would
    like it, have it if you could--and that one thing is just one day's
    exemption from the persecutions of Puff in its myriad shapes and
    disguises. But it is not to be allowed; all the agencies that will
    work at all are pressed into the service of pushing and puffing
    traffic; and we are fast becoming, from a nation of shopkeepers, a
    nation in a shop. If you walk abroad, it is between walls swathed in
    puffs; if you are lucky enough to drive your gig, you have to 'cut in
    and out' between square vans of crawling puffs; if, alighting, you
    cast your eyes upon the ground, the pavement is stencilled with puffs;
    if in an evening stroll you turn your eye towards the sky, from a
    paper balloon the clouds drop puffs. You get into an omnibus, out of
    the shower, and find yourself among half a score of others, buried
    alive in puffs; you give the conductor sixpence, and he gives you
    three pennies in change, and you are forced to pocket a puff, or
    perhaps two, stamped indelibly on the copper coin of the realm. You
    wander out into the country, but the puffs have gone thither before
    you, turn in what direction you may; and the green covert, the shady
    lane, the barks of columned beeches and speckled birches, of gnarled
    oaks and rugged elms--no longer the mysterious haunts of nymphs and
    dryads, who have been driven far away by the omnivorous demon of the
    shop--are all invaded by Puff, and subdued to the office of his
    ministering spirits. Puff, in short, is the monster megatherium of
    modern society, who runs rampaging about the world, his broad back in
    the air, and his nose on the ground, playing all sorts of ludicrous
    antics, doing very little good, beyond filling his own insatiable maw,
    and nobody knows how much mischief in accomplishing that.

    Push is an animal of a different breed, naturally a thorough-going,
    steady, and fast-trotting hack, who mostly keeps in the Queen's
    highway, and knows where he is going. Unfortunately, he is given to
    break into a gallop now and then; and whenever in this vicious mood,
    is pretty sure to take up with Puff, and the two are apt to make wild
    work of it when they scamper abroad together. The worst of it is, that
    nobody knows which is which of these two termagant tramplers: both are
    thoroughly protean creatures, changing shapes and characters, and
    assuming a thousand different forms every day; so that it is a task
    all but impossible to distinguish one from the other. Hence a man may
    got upon the back of either without well knowing whither he will be
    carried, or what will be the upshot of his journey.

    Dropping our parable, and leaving the supposed animals to run their
    indefinite career, let us take a brief glance at some of the
    curiosities of the science of Puffing and Pushing--for both are so
    blended, that it is impossible to disentangle one from the other--as
    it is carried on at the present hour in the metropolis.

    The business of the shopkeeper, as well as of all others who have
    goods to sell, is of course to dispose of his wares as rapidly as
    possible, and in the dearest market. This market he has to create, and
    he must do it in one of two ways: either he must succeed in persuading
    the public, by some means or other, that it is to their advantage to
    deal with him, or he must wait patiently and perseveringly until they
    have found that out, which they will inevitably do if it is a fact. No
    shop ever pays its expenses, as a general rule, for the first ten or
    twenty months, unless it be literally crammed down the public throat
    by the instrumentality of the press and the boarding; and it is
    therefore a question, whether it is cheaper to wait for a business to
    grow up, like a young plant, or to force it into sudden expansion by
    artificial means. When a business is manageable by one or two hands,
    the former expedient is the better one, and as such is generally
    followed, after a little preliminary advertising, to apprise the
    neighbourhood of its whereabouts. But when the proprietor has an army
    of assistants to maintain and to salarise, the case is altogether
    different: the expense of waiting, perhaps for a couple of years,
    would swallow up a large capital. On this account, he finds it more
    politic to arrest the general attention by a grand stir in all
    quarters, and some obtrusive demonstration palpable to all eyes, which
    shall blazon his name and pretensions through every street and lane of
    mighty London. Sometimes it is a regiment of foot, with placarded
    banners; sometimes one of cavalry, with bill-plastered vehicles and
    bands of music; sometimes it is a phalanx of bottled humanity,
    crawling about in labelled triangular phials of wood, corked with
    woful faces; and sometimes it is all these together, and a great deal
    more besides. By this means, he conquers reputation, as a despot
    sometimes carries a throne, by a _coup d'état_, and becomes a
    celebrity at once to the million, among whom his name is infinitely
    better known than those of the greatest benefactors of mankind. All
    this might be tolerable enough if it ended here; but, unhappily, it
    does not. Experiment has shewn that, just as gudgeons will bite at
    anything when the mud is stirred up at the bottom of their holes, so
    the ingenuous public will lay out their money with anybody who makes a
    prodigious noise and clatter about the bargains he has to give. The
    result of this discovery is, the wholesale daily publication of lies
    of most enormous calibre, and their circulation, by means which we
    shall briefly notice, in localities where they are likely to prove
    most productive.

    The advertisement in the daily or weekly papers, the placard on the
    walls or boardings, the perambulating vans and banner-men, and the
    doomed hosts of bottle-imps and extinguishers, however successful each
    may be in attracting the gaze and securing the patronage of the
    multitude, fail, for the most part, of enlisting the confidence of a
    certain order of customers, who, having plenty of money to spend, and
    a considerable share of vanity to work upon, are among the most
    hopeful fish that fall into the shopkeeper's net. These are the female
    members of a certain order of families--the amiable and genteel wives
    and daughters of the commercial aristocracy, and their agents, of this
    great city. They reside throughout the year in the suburbs: they
    rarely read the newspapers; it would not be genteel to stand in the
    streets spelling over the bills on the walls; and the walking and
    riding equipages of puffing are things decidedly low in their
    estimation. They must, therefore, be reached by some other means; and
    these other means are before us as we write, in the shape of a pile of
    circular-letters in envelopes of all sorts--plain, hot-pressed, and
    embossed; with addresses--some in manuscript, and others in
    print--some in a gracefully genteel running-hand, and others decidedly
    and rather obtrusively official in character, as though emanating from
    government authorities--each and all, however, containing the bait
    which the lady-gudgeon is expected to swallow. Before proceeding to
    open a few of them for the benefit of the reader, we must apprise him
    of a curious peculiarity which marks their delivery. Whether they come
    by post, as the major part of them do, not a few of them requiring a
    double stamp, or whether they are delivered by hand, one thing is
    remarkable--_they always come in the middle of the day_, between the
    hours of eleven in the forenoon and five in the afternoon, when, as a
    matter of course, the master of the house is not in the way. Never, by
    any accident, does the morning-post, delivered in the suburbs between
    nine and ten, produce an epistle of this kind. Let us now open a few
    of them, and learn from their contents what is the shopkeeper's
    estimate of the gullibility of the merchant's wife, or his daughter,
    or of the wife or daughter of his managing clerk.

    The first that comes to hand is addressed thus: 'No.
    2795.--DECLARATIVE NOTICE.--_From the Times, August 15, 1851._' The
    contents are a circular, handsomely printed on three crowded sides of
    royal quarto glazed post, and containing a list of articles for
    peremptory disposal, under unheard-of advantages, on the premises of
    Mr Gobblemadam, at No. 541 New Ruin Street. Without disguising
    anything more than the addresses of these puffing worthies, we shall
    quote _verbatim_ a few paragraphs from their productions. The
    catalogue of bargains in the one before us comprises almost every
    species of textile manufacture, as well native as foreign--among which
    silks, shawls, dresses, furs, and mantles are the most prominent; and
    amazing bargains they are--witness the following extracts:

    'A marvellous variety of fancy silks, cost from 4 to 5
    guineas each, will be sold for L.1, 19s. 6d. each.

    Robes of damas and broche (foreign), cost 6 guineas, to be
    sold for 2-1/2 guineas.

    Embroidered muslin robes, newest fashion, cost 18s. 9d., to
    be sold for 9s. 6d.

    Worked lace dresses, cost 35s., to be sold at 14s. 9d.

    Do. do. cost 28s. 6d., to be sold at 7s. 6d.

    Newest dresses, of fashionable materials,

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