Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/121

112 Among the 56 advertisers were commission merchants at Victoria and New Westminster, B. C., who advertised for the farmersbusiness; William F. Wilcox furniture store (billiard and ten-pin balls carved to the greatest accuracy); Gov. Byrnes of the "Identical" Wines and Liquors for cash; Commercial College (instructions given in writing, drawing, bookkeeping, arithmetic, navigation, etc. "The public are respectfully invited to examine scholars' improvement"); George H. Williams and A. C. Gibbs, law and collection office; Portland Foundry and Machine Shop; Jockey Club gin (with the usual "eminent" physicians' endorsement); Pacific University and Tualatin Academy; ads of fruit trees for sale; and the following magazines of the period: Blackwood' s Magazine and the British Reviews—the London British Quarterly (Conservative), the Edinburgh Review (Whig), the North British Review (Free Church), the Westminister Review (Liberal), and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Tory). "The present critical state of European affairs will render these publications unusually interesting during the coming year." This sentence could have been kept standing for at least three-quarters of a century.

There was a half-column house-ad, Prospects for the Daily and Weekly Oregonian, saying, in part: "It (the Oregonian) will be un-flinchingly Republican;—yet in the defense of its prinicples it will strive not to wantonly injure the feelings of its political opponents."

Public control over the treatment of mental diseases was not developed in the 60's as it is today, and it doubtless aroused no comment among the readers of the Oregonian (for May 15, 1865) to find in the same issue of the paper an advertisement for the Oregon State Insane Asylum and County Hospital, Drs. Hawthorne and Loryea, physicians and proprietors.

Adjoining a matter-of-fact announcement of Richards & McCracken regarding "Brooms, Baskets & Pails," came the more striking professional statement of Madame ve Conte, Fortune-Teller: "Having just received direct from France the Genuine Cards and Signs of the Celebrated Madame Norma, who told so perfectly the fate and fortune of the Great Napoleon the First, and cleverly re lates the past, clearly explains the present, and reliably predicts the future." (What a killing the lady could have made in Wall Street along in 1929!) But to quote the psychic specialist further: "Do you want to be successful in love or law? then consult Madame ve Conte, No. 27 Washington street, between First and Second. Consultation fee, $5." The matter-of-fact printer added "m 3 tf" to indicate that it was not to be dropped out of the paper until the Madame ordered, and, perhaps, to suggest to the more or less wary reader that the paper had not exactly volunteered this blurb for the seeress, who was a forerunner of the gifted Florance Marvin, who informed all interested readers of the Post-Intelligencer in the mid-