Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1885 — Page 6 Advertisements Column 1 [ADVERTISEMENT]

A Lesson in Advertising.

The lonesome Jersey sign-board, standing chin deep in the flood and over head in the rain, warning people not to have a picnic in flannel suits and lawn dresses that afternoon, brought to my mind a long, dreary, dismal November day I once passed—how I passed it, only a merciful .Providence knows—in Chapin, 111. Chapin is a junction town not quite so large as the Eag (ebusiness office. It rained all that day. It got up about daylight to rain and kept on raining harder every hour. I had to wait all day long for the train I wanted. In the afternoon, when my letters w<*re all answered and my newspaper work was accomplished, I stood at the window and looked dolefully out on the flooded landscape. The trees stood knee deep in the water. Everything was soaked. Everything drip, drip, dripped. Whatever could float floated. What couldn’t float sank. Water, water everywhere. In the clouds, in the air, on the ground, drip, gurgle, splash, drop and stream, swamp and torrent. And right in all this universe of moisture a great big sign, painted in white letters, black shaded, on a board fence, a sign so big that you could read it half a mile away, and it stared me in the face even when I shut my eyes and turned my back to it: “Bethesda Water at Hatch’s.”

Now, who the mischief wanted any of any kind of water on a day like that ? It made me so mad that I tried to quit looking at it. But I couldn’t. If I crawled under the bed, it was there; if I thrust my head inito the flue, it stared down the chimney. By and by, in utter despair, completely knocked out and exhausted, I yielded to my fate, went out in the rain, went right straight to Hatch’s and drank a glass of Bethesda water, and if there was anything ip the world I hated, it was Bethesda water. As a newspaper man I could only draw one moral from this: “Persistent advertising will tell.”— Burdette, in Brooklyn Eagle.