generation, the old time book agent, who until comparatively recently was a familiar figure in all parts of the country, is vanishing slowly from contemporary life. His boon companion, the lightning rod agent and the raucous voiced vender of nostrums, who sold his salves and various other compounds under the flare of the gasoline torch, already have slipped into oblivion.

The increasing intelligence of both the rural and urban population has done much to eliminate the traveling quack doctor and the lightning rod man from our social life. But it is the growth of advertising the realization on the part of publishers that books can be sold in greater quantities at a lower cost through the medium of newspapers and magazines than by the use of agents-that is responsible for the passing of the last figure in the once familiar trilogy of itinerants.

It was only a comparatively short time ago that publishers commenced to learn how to advertise their wares effectively -how to appeal to the emotions and curiosity of the book buying public. Several nationwide campaigns of publicity and advertising were conducted successfully. The phrase, "finish this story for yourself," became, and still is, one of the best known advertising slogans. The works of O. Henry, Kipling, Mark Twain, Jack London, Maupassant and other noted authors were exploited according to modern commercial practice and the results obtained were effective. You cannot slam the door in the face of an alluring magazine ad. and it is folly to set the bulldog on your favorite newspaper just because it is attempting to sell you a set of short story masterpieces or a universal compendum of knowledge. So, in the So, in the

mit of advertising, the printed word has taken the place and usurped the function of the personal salesman.

There was a certain romantic and, at the same time, pathetic aspect to the wandering profession before the efficiency of new commercial methods. Book agents for the greater part were either innocently young or pathetically old. The field attracted those who were starting out in life because it always offered an opportunity to make a living; and it was the refuge of life's failures, who turned to it when there seemed to be no other niche in the world wherein they could fit.

.

There were a few agents who were fitted by temperament to the arduous task of selling books to people who were determined not to read them, and agents of this type found the business a lucrative one. The book agents who were successful, however, probably could have reaped rewards as great, if not greater, selling oil stoves in equatorial climes. For the book agent generally was considered a public nuisance and he was given a greeting that accorded with his reputation at the majority of doors at which he knocked. He needed the cunning of Machiavelli to secure an opportunity even to start his sales talk, and before a sale could be "closed" he must have recourse to a forceful and insidious type of salesmanship.

Before an agent was sent into the field he was thoroughly coached in the merits of the proposition he had to present and was obliged to commit to memory various "patters" that might be used in selling his offering. Who is there that does not remember the type of agent who lacked the faculty of salesmanship altogether? He may have been a young cherub cheek

ed college student who sold books in the summer to pay his tuition during the winter months at school; it may have been an old man with a goatee and an air of faded respectability; but in either case, once having gained admission to a home or office, he would recite his sales arguments in a sing-song, mechanical manner which at one disclosed their origin to an

observant person.

The "instructions" to agents included not only various statements intended to prepossess the prospect in favor of the set of books or the ponderous tome which the agent was exploiting, but they also presented various methods of approach intended to pacify the irritation of the busy housewife, whose workaday temper was never improved by finding an agent at the front door after she had discarded her apron and dust cap in response to his knock.

The book agent, however, preferred to deal with women, he found them easier victims to his wiles than men, particularly when his appeal to them could be founded on the assumption that the literature. he was selling would be of inestimable value to their children.

Perhaps the last distinctive phase of book agenting came a very few years ago with that type of salesman who urged his wares on the plea that he was endeavoring to work his way through college. For, a short time agents who used this method of approach were very numerous. They were both male and female, and their introduction consisted of the simple request for the "vote" of the prospect. This opened the conversation and it then developed, according to the plausible agent, that there was a country wide contest being conducted by some benevolent association and that the person getting the most "votes" would get a free college educa

for you to buy a certain book or set of books. This gag produced splendid results, but the public soon became aware of the fact that in most instances, the assertions of the agents were devoid of truth, with the result that the "aspiring student" type of agent lost much of his or her effectiveness.

Throughout the country what might be termed the genus itinerant is disappearing. Charlatans and quacks of various kinds still linger in the backwoods districts, but for the greater part they have gone and left only memories behind them. The book agent, however, has left his imprint in every community--the book shelves in homes in the rural districts and the smaller cities will testify to his activities long after his species has become extinct. Now, and for a long time to come, the gloomy libraries in old fashioned American domiciles will contain the inevitable doctor's book, "which, adam, will save its cost in three months by eliminating the necessity of summoning the physician for those slight ailments to which mankind is heir." the encyclopedia "which is a beacon light of knowledge and which should be in every family which desires the incalculable benefits of erudition," the impressive little volume with the black cover which exposes the wiles and wickedness of slick city crooks and which states emphatically, among other precepts, that one "must never sgn a paper for a stranger."

Few, save those who deplore the passing of certain picturesque phases of American life, will mourn the passing of the book agent. And yet society owes a certain debt of gratitude to the young optimists and the old pessimists who made up the majority of those in the "profession." For, in the face of obstacles that only dauntless or desperate spirits could surmount, they carried the first flickering light of culture and education into byways that otherwise might long have been left unillumined.

Instant Bunion Relief Prove It At My Expense

Don't send me one cent-just let me prove
it to you as I have done for 57,532 others in the
last six months. I claim to have the most success-
ful remedy for bunions ever made and I want you
to let me send you a treatment Free, entirely at
my expense. I don't care how many so-called
cures, or shields, or pads you ever tried without
success-I don't care how disgusted you are with
them all-you have not tried my remedy and I
have such absolute confidence in it that I am go-
ing to send you a treatment absolutely
FREE. It is a wonderful yet simple home ren.edy
which relieves you almost instantly of the pain; it
removes the cause of the bunion and thus the ugly
deformity disappears-all this while you are wear-
ing tighter shoes than ever. Just send your name
and address and treatment will be sent you
promptly in plain sealed envelope.

FOOT REMEDY CO.
West 26th Street, Chicago, Ill.

WHO, in these
days would de-

prive themselves of the
comfort afforded by the use of

ALLEN'S FOOT-EASE

This Antiseptic, Healing Powder makes tight shoes feel easy, relieves the distress of hot, tired, aching, swollen feet, and gives new vigor. Over 1,500,000 lbs. of Powder for the Feet were used by our Army and Navy during the war.

Ask for Allen's Foot-Ease to-day

製

THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE DUSTER When "The Mirrors of Downing Street" (G. P. Putnam's Sons) appeared recently, it was evident that the author-who carefully conceals his identity behind the pen name "A Gentleman With a Duster"was in close touch with the men holding the reins of government. It was clear, too, that he thought the empire's business ought to be in the hands of far better men. So he was invited to outline an ideal Cabinet, which he has done in an outspoken article in The London Magazine for March. The following seven are his choice for the supreme council of the nation: Prime Minister, Alfred Zimmern; Foreign Secretary, Lord Robert Cecil; Director of the Commonwealth, Lord Leverhulme; President of the Board of Trade, Sir Alfred Booth; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Inverforth; Home Secretary, Mrs. Bramwell Booth; Minister of Labor, J. R. Clynes. The other Ministers of the Government should be summoned only when occasion required their pre

sence.

EUGENE CUNNINGHAM'S SUCCESS

Though still under thirty, Eugene Cunningham, whose new volume of sailor stories, "The Regulation Guy" is announced for early publication by the Cornhill Company, has crowded more adventure adventure into his few years than falls to the lot of most people in a life-time. Like the boy in William McFee's "Casuals of the Sea," he yielded to the lure of the blue banner and brilliant posters of the Navy Recruiting Station at Fort Worth, Texas, and, as soon as he had finished high-school, en

刻

listed as apprentice seaman with a roving commission.

Besides his sailor experiences this writer has done newspaper work, sold life insurance, put to sea as deck-hand and first class passenger, ridden the ranges of Texas, Costra Rica and Nicaragua, inviegled boys from plow-tails to the decks of meno'-war, followed the trail from San Jose, Costa Rica, to Zacapa, Guatemala, as magazine correspondent and stood anti-submarine watch in the war zone. From which it will be seen that Mr. Cunningham has hearkened to the old adage about a year of Europe's being worth a century of Cathay.

In "Ye Good Old Days"

In those spacious Elizabethan times when the Globe Theatre at Southwark rang to the plaudits of sturdy Englishmen witnessing for the first time tragedies and comedies that still remain vital literary achievements through the centuries it was the custom to publish the play. Playbooks were as common then as the novels of Harold Bell Wright and Robert W. Chambers are today. From every bookstall their quaintly printed tomes allured the passer-by. The reading of plays was the principal intellectual pleasure. No dramatist went without having his efforts collected between covers. Today all this is ordered differently. The comedies and dramas that hold our contemporary stage and spell success by long runs are rarely printed. It is true that within the past decade an increasing number of plays have been printed, but the efforts so offered the reading public are hardly the pieces that are (or have been) popular successes.

A Book You Can't Afford To

Be Without

The Real Estate Educator

By F. M. PAYNE-New Edition

A book for hustling Real Estate boosters, promoters, town builders and every man who owns, sells, rents or leases real estate of any kind. "Don'ts" in Real Estate "Pointers," Specific Legal Forms, eta, etc.

The New 1916 Edition contains The Torren's System of Registration, Available U.

S. Lands for Homesteads.

The A. B. C.'s of Realty.

Workmen's Compensation Act, Income Tax Law, Employer's Liability Act, Statute of Frauds, How to Sell Real Estate, How to Become a Notary Public or Comm. of Deeds, and other Useful Information.

This book is an inspiration

to the indifferent and a stimulus to the ambitious. Apart from the agent, operator, or contractor, there is much to be found in its contents that will prove of great value to all who wish to be posted on Valuation, Contracts, Mortgages, Leases, Evictions, etc. The cost might be saved many times over in one transaction.

INVESTIGATE

You owe that much to yourself and family. Then you will certainly learn there is something new under the sun in the State of TEXAS. Over five hundred new millionaires made from Oil discoveries in the past two years. Thousands of people have made smaller fortunes from OIL.

THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE GETTING