Foreign News: Hookery

French ingenuity has managed, in the past to sweeten alluringly the uses of advertisement. Managers of theatres once obtained publicity by purchasing the services of some penurious gentleman, shaving his head, and seating him, haughtily tailored, in some famed cabaret, with a blurb for the show tattooed upon his naked poll. Last week a bouillon company evolved a sleight even more alarming. An army of ragged sandwich men was sent into the streets, armed with bundles of red feathers upon which the name of the product was printed in black. Each feather had a hook. The sandwich men hooked them to the backs of passersby.

Ribald sandwich men prowled after dainty women, hooked their leering quills into the backs of afternoon frocks, tailored coats. Red feathers depended from Deputies coattails; .gamins snickered and the deputies, the fine ladies, not seeing the joke, snickered also.

The wastrel hookers did more than they were paid for. Having hooked a feather into the tail of a famed French lawyer, one of them capered at his side, shouting: “Ya been in a henhouse, ya been in a hen-house.” The barrister, embarrassed perhaps by a guilty conscience, pretended to share their mirth.