"Oh, that is not a servant who is singing, sir," was the answer."You can step to this window and see for yourself."Bok did so, and there, sitting alone on one of the rustic benches in the flower-house, was a small, elderly woman.Keeping time with the first finger of her right hand, as if with a baton, she was slightly swaying her frail body as she sang, softly yet sweetly, Charles Wesley's hymn, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and Sarah Flower Adams's "Nearer, My God, to Thee."But the singer was not a servant.It was Harriet Beecher Stowe!
On another visit to Hartford, shortly afterward, Bok was just turning into Forrest Street when a little old woman came shambling along toward him, unconscious, apparently, of people or surroundings.In her hand she carried a small tree-switch.Bok did not notice her until just as he had passed her he heard her calling to him: "Young man, young man." Bok retraced his steps, and then the old lady said: "Young man, you have been leaning against something white," and taking her tree-switch she whipped some wall dust from the sleeve of Bok's coat.It was not until that moment that Bok recognized in his self-appointed "brush" no less a personage than Harriet Beecher Stowe.
"This is Mrs.Stowe, is it not?" he asked, after tendering his thanks to her.
Those blue eyes looked strangely into his as she answered:
"That is my name, young man.I live on this street.Are you going to have me arrested for stopping you?" with which she gathered up her skirts and quickly ran away, looking furtively over her shoulder at the amazed young man, sorrowfully watching the running figure!
Speaking of Mrs.Stowe brings to mind an unscrupulous and yet ingenious trick just about this time played by a young man attached to one of the New York publishing houses.One evening at dinner this chap happened to be in a bookish company when the talk turned to the enthusiasm of the Southern negro for an illustrated Bible.The young publishing clerk listened intently, and next day he went to a Bible publishing house in New York which issued a Bible gorgeous with pictures and entered into an arrangement with the proprietors whereby he should have the Southern territory.He resigned his position, and within a week he was in the South.He made arrangements with an artist friend to make a change in each copy of the Bible which he contracted for.The angels pictured therein were white in color.He had these made black, so he could show that there were black angels as well as white ones.The Bibles cost him just eighty cents apiece.He went about the South and offered the Bibles to the astonished and open-mouthed negroes for eight dollars each, two dollars and a half down and the rest in monthly payments.His sales were enormous.Then he went his rounds all over again and offered to close out the remaining five dollars and a half due him by a final payment of two dollars and a half each.In nearly every case the bait was swallowed, and on each Bible he thus cleared four dollars and twenty cents net!
Running the elevator in the building where a prominent publishing firm had its office was a negro of more than ordinary intelligence.The firm had just published a subscription book on mechanical engineering, a chapter of which was devoted to the construction and operation of passenger elevators.One of the agents selling the book thought he might find a customer in Washington.
"Wash," said the book-agent, "you ought to buy a copy of this book, do you know it?""No, boss, don't want no books.Don't git no time fo' readin' books,"drawled Wash."It teks all mah time to run dis elevator.""But this book will help you to run your elevator.See here: there's a whole chapter here on elevators," persisted the canvasser.
"Don't want no help to run dis elevator," said the darky."Dis elevator runs all right now.""But," said the canvasser, "this will help you to run it better.You will know twice as much when you get through.""No, boss, no, dat's just it," returned Wash."Don't want to learn nothing, boss," he said."Why, boss, I know more now than I git paid for."There was one New York newspaper that prided itself on its huge circulation, and its advertising canvassers were particularly insistent in securing the advertisements of publishers.Of course, the real purpose of the paper was to secure a certain standing for itself, which it lacked, rather than to be of any service to the publishers.
By dint of perseverance, its agents finally secured from one of the ten-cent magazines, then so numerous, a large advertisement of a special number, and in order to test the drawing power of the newspaper as a medium, there was inserted a line in large black type:
"SEND TEN CENTS FOR A NUMBER."
But the compositor felt that magazine literature should be even cheaper than it was, and to that thought in his mind his fingers responded, so that when the advertisement appeared, this particular bold-type line read:
"SEND TEN CENTS FOR A YEAR."
This wonderful offer appealed with singular force to the class of readers of this particular paper, and they decided to take advantage of it.The advertisement appeared on Sunday, and Monday's first mail brought the magazine over eight hundred letters with ten cents enclosed "for a year's subscription as per your advertisement in yesterday's --."The magazine management consulted its lawyer, who advised the publisher to make the newspaper pay the extra ninety cents on each subscription, and, although this demand was at first refused, the proprietors of the daily finally yielded.At the end of the first week eight thousand and fifty-five letters with ten cents enclosed had reached the magazine, and finally the total was a few over twelve thousand!
