Sir: I was reading the real-estate transactions in the Dispatch, and I came across an item in which a parcel of land was sold by Ms. X to Mr. Y, the mineral rights not included.
I had thought we were living in an enlightened age. I had thought we had grown beyond the dark days of medievalism when property owners could run roughshod over any entity they considered a lesser being. I had thought we had amended our laws to take into account our superior understanding of the natural rights of all entities.
But no! Here in the twenty-first century, it is completely legal to ignore the rights of minerals, as if they were inanimate objects! It is quite hunkydory with the law to treat minerals as no better than mere objects to be exploited as we please!
Well, this is where someone has to take a stand. I am going to make it my business to see to it that mineral rights are respected, and I shall do it by means that have proved themselves effective. I have commissioned a specially printed bumper sticker, printed in plant-based ink no less, and as soon as I find something unobjectionable to stick it on everybody will know. —Sincerely, Esmeralda Stone, Point Breeze.
If you run a store, you need signs. They draw your customers’ attention to the things you want them to buy. You might need a small sign advertising a sale on dirty collars, for example—because how are your customers going to know these collars are a bargain if you don’t tell them?
These small signs were known in the retail business as “showcards.” Today they come in standard designs, printed by computer or industrial printer. But in the days before large chain stores and computer printing, it was simply not economical or expeditious to have showcards printed from type. Instead, they would be hand-lettered, by a professional if the store was a large operation, or by the shopkeeper himself if it was a small business. Where skilled labor is needed, correspondence schools will follow, and dozens of teach-yourself manuals of showcard writing were published in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
You could master the basics of showcard lettering in a few weeks at most. But if you wanted to set yourself apart from the ordinary run of half-educated clerks and make yourself into a truly valuable showcard-writer, you would learn the fancy tricks of decoration in the later chapters of these books, such as three-dimensional metallic designs.
But what will you write once you have the skill to form letters and decorate the spaces around them? Some of the books give suggestions for advertising phrases as well. For example, you might try a few homespun platitudes.
An Ounce of Underwear is Worth a Pound of Medicine.
The Sun of a New Prosperity is Rising Over the Hilltops of Discontent.
Laugh and the World Will Look at Your Teeth, and Judge of Your Taste—Good or Bad—By Their Condition.
Or you might appeal to the mathematically inclined.
Quality, Style, Finish—These Are the Four Cardinal Points of Excellence Which distinguish “Our” Clothing from All Others.
Note the early use of “quotation marks” for “emphasis.”
You might point out the superiority of your goods.
A Medley of Merit.
An Avalanche of Beauty.
Or you might allude to the extraordinary bargain to be had while supplies last.
A Cut to the Heart—A Tragedy in Prices.
Frost Nipped and All Shriveled Up Are the Prices.
As silly as some of these signs might have been, they did their job. And they probably did it better than the printed signs of today, which we ignore. Our printed signs are all alike: if you go into a Rite Aid, and then travel five hundred miles and go into another Rite Aid, you will see the same signs, and you will ignore them, because they are simply visual noise. But the hand-lettered sign is a personal communication from the merchant to you. There is only one sign like it; you will never see it again.
The art of lettering signs by hand is almost completely lost. As Dr. Boli has remarked more than once before, if a graphic designer wants text to look handwritten, she scours Google Fonts for a handwriting font that approximates the look she has in mind—as if there were no other way to create text that looks handwritten than by setting it in specially designed type.
But there’s good news. The art can be revived. You could learn it yourself from the same textbooks that taught the clerks of a century ago to become more valuable employees by mastering the art of the showcard.
As most of our readers have probably already guessed, there is a new page of Showcard Writing in the Eclectic Library.
The well-known artist Eli “Bonkers” Johnson will be opening his new show at an undisclosed location. The new show is entitled “Hey, Is This the Art Opening?” Potential patrons will wander through the neighborhoods most fashionable among the artsy set, looking into each storefront and asking the prescribed question. Mr. Johnson promises champagne and chocolate to all patrons who find the location of the show. It will be open for one night only, and then will close and reopen at a different undisclosed location, which Mr. Johnson says is necessary to maintain fidelity to the theme of the show.
Volunteers needed for new study on the effects of studies on the subjects who volunteer for them. Subjects will be required to fill out weekly surveys and answer irrelevant but embarrassing personal questions. Selected volunteers will be subjected to random bureaucratic inconveniences, such as being dressed in the chicken suit. At the end of the study, all participants will be given one $100 bill each, which they will be told is counterfeit, as part of an unrelated study by our friends in the Economics Department on the ethical sense of the average American when presented with a moral dilemma involving direct pecuniary benefit to the subject. Duck Hollow University, Department of Applied Psychology and Popular Entertainment.