AWFUL FATE OF A MAN WHO ADVERTISED,

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 318, 21 November 1888, Page 2

AWFUL FATE OF A MAN WHO ADVERTISED,

His name was Hippoflam. His uncle" left him some money, and he started in the grocery and provision business. The canvassers came around there from thb daily papers and said ho had the best location in town, the nicest stock and all that, and then went bang at him for an advertisement. He had read in the papers that Old Parr, Holloway, Ooleman, A. T, Stewart, John Smith, and hosts of others had once been poor, and had made their start by advertising. lie believed it all, dough-head that he was, and he advertised four squares in the Torchlight, six squares in the Badger, half-a-colnmn in the Moonshine, and slipped a five-pound note to the reporters, and told 'em to say a good word for him. The reporters did, and when people saw from the advertisements that Hippoflam had started in business with a fresh, large stock, thpy rushed for the store. Then his troubles commenced. He had to hire an extra clerk and a cash boy. He couldn't find time to sit down on a candle-box, thrust his feet upon the fender, and gossip about, politics and the Egyptian question. Every day he had to write or telegraph for new goods, ordering more coffee, tea, sugar, or spices, and when the goods came he had to open them and retail them out. As day after day went by, people began to ! notice that Hippoflam was growing thin and pale. He looked careworn and harassed, as if driven. He kept advertising, and people kept patronising him. Other grocers could get time to go off on 'excursions on the Columbia, to sit down for hours at a time to play draughts and dominoes ; but Hippoflam could not get au hour to himself except time to sleep. By-and-by he had to open an account with yet another bank, get more clerks and cash boys ; and it enme ab»ut that he kept a carriage, built a fine house, wore broad clofch, and was elected provost of the town. Of course a man couldn't go on in this way many years and not break down his health, and the day came at last when Hippoflam had the dyspepsia, tho jaundice, heart disease, rheumatism, and several other complaints. The shadow of death hum* over him, -while the grocers hadn't advertisod at all grew fat and porliy, and had douMe chins on Vrn. They had time to go fishing 1 , were never (ir<\l onfc looking ovor their hank nocounts, and i& wasn't onco a year that they h«d to order anything more tlmn n box of herrings. Broken down in lipnlth, tyolina; mad at the world, and finding himself a victim of Iho newspapers, Hippoflam me d.<y drew all his money out of the bank, passed it over to a lunatic asylum, set his store on fire, blew up his mansion with a keg of powder, and then iiangel hinself on a peach irr-o in tho back yard. The coroner cut him dovfn, the jury sat on him, and the vi-rlict/ was — "Advertising killed him, and wp hereby warn all business men to lpfc bis fate bo an awful example gainst patrouising newspapers/ I—American1 — American Paper.