Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/118

 responsible for suggesting the designs and for the production of the noble posters of Cassell's publications which adorned the hoardings of the kingdom. He it was who carried out John Cassell's idea of adapting the French cartoon, "The Child: What Will He Become?" to the advertising of the "Popular Educator." Puttock was one of the boys who never grew up. He lifted or pushed everybody around him out of the dull rut of mechanical routine. Full of schoolboy tricks and fond of ragging, he delighted especially in playing jokes upon members of the staff who lost their tempers or were inclined unduly to stand upon their dignity. He was a famous peacemaker. His method of settling a quarrel was to lure the adversaries into his room together and amuse them with a comic caricature of their own dispute, so that there was nothing for it but to laugh and shake hands. He had a nickname for everybody in the place, however exalted his position. The quips and cranks of Cassell's court jester, as Bonavia Hunt said, "are tenderly and gratefully remembered by those who writhed under his labels."

Puttock's great achievement was the development of a new style of literary advertising. The Bookseller, announcing his death in October, 1896, remarked that before Puttock's time book-advertising might be read by those who sauntered, but not by those who ran. " It was the attention of the latter class that Puttock sought to arrest by a style of advertising hitherto disregarded or untried. The boldness of his views was cordially supported by the firm, and a system was developed by which Cassell's publications were the best advertised in the trade."

Puttock's mantle fell upon F. J. Cross, a buoyant personality and a very hard worker, who remained in charge of the Publicity Department until 1905, and was then on the literary side of the House until his retirement in 1908.