ent.

Other forms of advertising employed over the years included finely
engraved labels, circulars and handbills, printed blotters, small
billboards, fans, premiums sent in return for labels, a concise--_very_
concise--reference dictionary, and trade cards of various sorts. One
trade card closely resembled a railroad pass; this was in the 1880s when
railroad passes were highly prized and every substantial citizen aspired
to own one. Thus, almost everyone would have felt some pride in carrying
what might pass, at a glance, as a genuine pass on the K.C.L.R.R.;
although it was signed only by "Good Health" as the general agent,
entitled the bearer merely to ride on foot or horseback and was actually
an advertisement of Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets. Another card played
somewhat delicately but still unmistakably on the Indian Root Pills'
capacity to restore male virility. This card pictured a fashionably
dressed tomcat, complete with high collar, cane and derby, sitting
somewhat disconsolately on a fence as the crescent moon rose behind him,
with these reflections:

How terribly lonesome I feel! How queer,
To be sitting alone, with nobody near,
Oh, how I wish Maria was here,
Mon dieu!
The thought of it fills me with horrible doubt,
I should smile, I should blush, I should wail,
I should shout,
Just suppose some fellow has cut me out!
Me out!

And underneath the lesson is given:

Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills
The Best Family Pill in use

[Illustration: FIGURE 20.--A trade card advertising Kingsland's
Chlorinated Tablets, which closely resembled a railroad pass.]

Testimonials submitted voluntarily by happy users of the pills were
always widely featured in the almanacs, newspaper advertisements, and
handbills. Although the easy concoction of the stories about Dr. Morse
and Dr. Cunard might suggest that there would have been no hesitation in
fabricating these testimonials, it is probable that they were genuine;
at least, many have survived in the letters scattered over the floor of
the Indian Root Pill factory. In some cases one might feel that the
testimonials were lacking in entire good faith, for many of them were
submitted by dealers desiring lenient credit or other favors. Witness,
for example, the following from B. Mollohan of Mt. Pleasant, Webster
County, West Va., on April 16, 1879:

Pleas find here enclosed Two Dollars & 50 cts $2 _