twelve hundred places booked at the last stock! Tut, man, you're looking thin! Here, try a drop of this.” And he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled Pinkerton's Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire.
“God bless me!” said I, gasping and winking after my first plunge into this fiery fluid. “And what does 'Warranted Entire' mean?”
“Why, Loudon! you ought to know that!” cried Pinkerton. “It's real, copper-bottomed English; you see it on all the old-time wayside hostelries over there.”
“But if I'm not mistaken, it means something Warranted Entirely different,” said I, “and applies to the public house, and not the beverages sold.”
“It's very possible,” said Jim, quite unabashed. “It's effective, anyway; and I can tell you, sir, it has boomed that spirit: it goes now by the gross of cases. By the way, I hope you won't mind; I've got your portrait all over San Francisco for the lecture, enlarged from that carte de visite: 'H. Loudon Dodd, the Americo-Parisienne Sculptor.' Here's a proof of the small handbills; the posters are the same, only in red and blue, and the letters fourteen by one.”
I looked at the handbill, and my head turned. What was the use of words? why seek to explain to Pinkerton the knotted horrors of “Americo-Parisienne”? He took an early occasion to point it out as “rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the lecture written up to that.” Even after we had reached San Francisco, and at the actual physical shock of my own effigy placarded on the streets I had broken forth in petulant words, he never comprehended in the least the ground of my aversion.
“If I had only known you disliked red lettering!” was as high as he could rise. “You are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is preferable, and shows a great deal further. The only thing that pains me is
