Listen to Mr. Aesop

Abstract

This pamphlet is fascinating not only as a period piece that advertises the Oakland automobile and uses phone numbers that are anywhere between two and five digits long. It also is fascinating for the way it matches an individual business in Harrisburg, PA, with each of the twenty-four fables here. Each fable gets a page and a simple three-color illustration. The fables were selected from Jacobs' edition published by Macmillan. Some matches are natural, e.g. GGE (5) with the Mechanics Trust Company and CJ (6) with a jeweler. BS (8) underscores the strong stitching of a tailor. The Traveler and Fortune (14) promotes an insurance company. Many of the ads have to turn against the fable. Thus after the first fable, The Fox and the Mask (3), we read While clothes do not make the man, they do help to make his reputation. The fable Prometheus and the Making of Man (12) has the moral A Leopard Cannot Change His Spots, but the next sentence proclaims Change, however, is one of nature's immutable and universal laws on the way to offering Hoover & Sons as morticians. Right after the moral Familiarity Breeds Contempt (21), we are admonished This is true in some instances, but in others quite the opposite. We are to get familiar with Walker's Ice Cream. Other matches may be somewhat forced. What does WC (4) really have to do with a haberdashery?! The Man and the Trees (11) somehow turns into an ad for a drug store. WSC (24) differs from the usual version; here the wolf leads a lamb away from the flock and devours it.