Sunday, March 5, 1900

         I found a copy of the Illustrated London News from Christmas, in the pile of rubbish the housemaids brought down from the family’s bedrooms.  Thinking to simply look it over, I took it into the Still Room to read when I had a minute to spare.

         What struck me were the advertisements for some of the things we make so painstakingly by hand.  Medicines and soaps I could simply go to the chemists and buy, if I had the money. 

         I love the flowery way the preparations are shown.  For instance, Eno’s Fruit Salts.  This is what it promises – There is no doubt that where it has been taken in the earliest stages of a disease it has, in innumerable instances, PREVENTED what would otherwise have been a SERIOUS ILLNESS.  The effect of ‘ENO’S FRUIT SALT’ upon any DISORDERED, SLEEPLESSNESS, AND FEVERISH condition is SIMPLY MARVELLOUS.  It is, in fact, NATURE’S OWN REMEDY and an UNSURPASSED ONE. 

         Bovril ‘makes the weak strong and the strong stronger’.  Neaves’s Food is ‘admirably adapted to the needs of Young Persons’, Carter’s Little Liver Pills will ‘cure all liver ills’, and Pear’s Soap is ‘matchless for the complexion’.

         Martha and I were fascinated by the adverts for the products we work so hard to create.  We were reading them over when there was a rap on the door.  A tall young man wearing a military uniform came in.  “Hello Martha”, he said, “Have you any liniment for a sore muscle?”  Martha dropped a curtsey.  “Master Angus,” she murmured.  Then, to me, “Jean, get the muscle liniment for Master Angus.  When I passed it to him he clicked his heels together and winked at me.  I must have turned thirteen shades of red.  “Jean,” he smiled at me, “Jeannie with the light brown hair.”

Then he was gone.  “Watch yourself, Jean,” Martha warned me, “He’s not for the likes of us.”  Of course I know that, but I can dream.  He’s the handsomest man I ever saw.