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Updated: May 6, 2025
What would first strike the eye was the signboards, gaily painted, and swinging in the summer breeze. Every house had one, for there were no numbers, and these served the purpose; consequently no two similar ones must be near each other.
When I got into the streets upon this Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay: the signboards were painted in such gaudy colours; the gilded letters were so very golden; the bricks were so very red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and area railings were so very green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors so marvellously bright and twinkling; and all so slight and unsubstantial in appearance that every thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime.
On leaving Bamborough we came as nearly getting lost in the narrow, winding byways as at any time during our tour. A bridge under repair on the direct route to the main road compelled us to resort to byways which were unmarked by signboards and in as ill condition as many American roads. Nor could the people of whom we inquired give us intelligent direction.
In the large public-house opposite, with its dirty windows and faded signboards, the gas was already being lit, which should change it from its daylight dreariness to a resort of light and life. Mr.
When he went to the cemetery, which he frequently did, a statement to that effect, and a plan showing the route to and through the cemetery, was always appended to his door, and, as he could never clearly imagine his boy as having passed the childhood in which he had last seen him, all the signboards, placards, and circulars were in large capital letters.
The most credulous would have doubted these signboards; for the craft of the modern tradesman is exerted to lure indoors the passing glance, since if the glance is pleased the feet may follow; but this alleged tobacconist and his neighbours had long been fond of dust on their windows, evidently, and shades were pulled far down on the glass of their doors.
I was much interested by the shops and their signboards. The latter were fixed all over the fronts of the shops, and contained a delineation of the goods sold within. There was no necessity for reading. The pictorial portraits told their own tale.
I saw one of these old signboards on exhibition in a museum in Tokyo. Japan closed her ports, established a deadline around her domain and allowed no ships to land, shut out the world and became a hermit nation. It was the eighth of July, 1853, that a fleet of vessels boldly crossed the forbidden line and dropped anchor in what is now known as Yokohama harbor.
But when her American lodger leaves her, she asks, and who is she that can expect to keep a beautiful young lady who will be naming her own cottage and painting signboards for herself before long, likely? but when her American lodger is gone, how is she, Mrs. Bobby, to put by a few shillings a month towards the debt on the cottage? These are some of the problems she presents to me.
Remain an honorable, independent hero of virtue, paint pictures, and see to it that you sell them, and if you do not succeed, then be contented to paint signboards for merchants and their walls for burghers, and console yourself with this, that you have refused a higher career from principles of virtue and magnanimity.
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