ADVERTISEMENTS MIRROR LIFE

The counting-room sends up its classified advertisements.
All the complicated life of our age can be read in these columns, —
Chances for making a fortune; land for sale; new publications;
Coming and going of steamboats and trains;
Lectures and concerts and theatrical attractions;
Excursions; trips at startling reductions;
Chances to visit the Yosemite Valley, the Yellowstone Park,
To see the giant trees, the sequoia,
Even to the glacier-lined coasts of Alaska,
Or up the Great Lakes through the ore-charged " Soo " canal,
Up to Duluth once half-ridiculed, now fully recognized,
As the " Zenith city of the unsalted seas. "

Nothing that human mind can desire or devise
Fails to find publicity in the advertisement-column.

The linotypes click; the molten metal forms into slugs;
The columns are swiftly built up and the forms are sent to the press.

Then the mighty machine begins its wonderful work;
The rolled paper unwinds; it receives its burden of ink;
It is cut and folded and counted and ready to bear to the world
Joy and sorrow, amusement and information and profit.

When the merchant or the scholar sits at his table
Awaiting the maid to bring in the breakfast,
The morning paper, still damp, is placed at his elbow,
Or as he rides in the train it whiles away the long hour.
Then it is thrown aside like the shell of a nut —
Marvellous compend of knowledge — and sold for a song.
Now it will kindle a kitchen fire or wrap up a bundle,
So ephemeral and flimsy and yet such an engine of power!