ought; whence they humbly
hope that they shall not be put to the expense of buying new cloaths."
This is not a very humorous production, but at least it bears witness
to the common occurrence in 1746 of the highlander's figure at the
shops of snuff and tobacco-sellers.

The highlander, as he existed within living memory at many shop doors,
and as he still exists at a few, was and is the survivor of many
similar wooden figures as trade signs. The wooden figure of a negro or
"Indian" with gilt loin-cloth and feathered head, has already been
mentioned as an old tobacconist's sign. In early Georgian days a
tobacconist named John Bowden, who dealt in all kinds of snuff, and
also in "Aloe, Pigtail, and Wild Tobacco; with all sorts of
perfumer's goods, wholesale and retail," traded at the sign of "The
Highlander and Black Boy" in Threadneedle Street, London. At York, in
this present year, 1914, I came upon a brightly painted wooden figure
of Napoleon in full uniform and snuff-box in hand, standing at the
door of a small tobacco-shop. Another class of sign or emblem was
represented by the "wooden midshipman," which many of us have seen in
Leadenhall Street, and which Dickens made famous in "Dombey and Son."
Sometimes the wooden figure of a sailor stood outside public-houses
with such signs as "The Jolly Sailor"; and a black doll was long a
familiar token of the loathly shop kept by the tradesmen mysteriously
known as Marine Store Dealers. Images of this kind sometimes stood at
the door, or in many cases were placed on brackets or swung from the
lintels.

Sir Walter Scott said that in London a Scotchman would walk half a
mile farther to purchase his ounce of snuff where the sign of the
Highlander announced a North Briton.

Dickens's little figure, which adorned old Sol Gills's shop, "thrust
itself out above the pavement, right leg foremost," with shoe buckles
and flapped waistcoat very much unlike the real thing, and "bore at
its right eye the most offensively disproportionate piece of
machinery." But this was only one of many "little timber midshipmen in
obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the shop-doors of
nautical instrument-makers in taking observations of the
hackney-coaches." All have disappeared, together with the black dolls
of the rag shops and many other old-time figures. A stray highlander
or two, or other figure, may survive here and there; but with very few
exceptions indeed, the once abundant to