I hope you are able to read some of these spot adverts in the San Francisco Examiner of 1893. They may not be pure poetry but they are relics of a bygone age. Before the advent of ad men, this was the popular and ubiquitous method of advertising everything from “Fall and winter bonnets, ribbons, flowers, plumes &c.” to “Improved Ambrotypes” (early kind of photograph), to “Sea otter, land otter and beaver skins.” These were the tweets of their day, short, no nonsense copy with the occasional spot (and I mean tiny) engraving. Amazing how much can be conveyed in such a small space.
