Life — September 1, 1910 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Fifteen Million Mark Passed LIFE’S TOTAL MENTAL CIRCULATION NOW AROUND TWENTY MILLIONS Please remember, that LIFE’S mental circulation is now about twenty millions. This includes fifteen million regular thought subscribers and about five mil- lion fransients—_people who, in a moment of idleness, think they would like to see a mental copy of LIFE, and, of course, get it—after they have thought twenty- five cents. We can send you a trial thought subscription for three months for three dollars. We charge a little more for this pro rata than for a year. We do this because of the additional tax it makes on our thought bureau. Our regular advertising rate is one hundred dollars a line—no preferred space. Remember, in sending in your advertisement, always to think exactly what you ‘want to say. We cannot send you back revised mental copy. Last week, for example, a man who began to send in a mental advertisement for an up-to-date coffin broke off in the middle to tell some friend a funny story. Now the people in our thought department are not all infallible. They work mechanically and record vibrations more or less automatically. When this order was received, therefore, the story went along with it, and appeared in the next mental number. Our friend demanded back his mental money, in spite of the fact that he had sold about four thousand extra coffins on account of that story to people who thought it was a good thing—and all on the ground that his dignity as an advertiser had been damaged. Don’t be interrupted, therefore, when you are send- ing in your mental advertisement. The only real difference between our mental LIFE and its physical representative lies in the elimination of mechanics. You have to think out the copy for a plain every-day advertisement before you commit it to Paper. But in my case, you don’t do anything other than think it out. And if it doesn’t ng true Gee. Ime. Mit. will know it. That is why he is the greatest uplifting influence in the country. You must, as an advertiser, be absolutely sincere. If you think aluminum coffins when they are only tin, he’ll know it. If you think pure silk ladies’ hose when they are half cotton, he'll know it. If you think ninety per cent. nourishment in your breakfast food when it is only about ninety-ninth of one per cent. Gee. Ime. Mit. will begin to vibrate with indignation before you have finished. He knows the secret thoughts of every well-known advertiser in the country. We have fifteen million paid up—in their mind—subscribers back of us. We have received the following vibration: Life: 1 my last mental copy, on the third page. second column, bottom, is an old chestnut—well it must be at least four thousand years old. If, as you claim, you are an up-to ind your mental numbers are the very Ii how in the world do you account for th! ‘Are you a fraud? B-——G—— This is an illustration of the fact that the only Teality is thought. We found, upon investigating the matter, that this particular page is edited by an astrol- oger, whose previous mental pedigree shows that he is the reincarnated spirit of a joke writer who lived in the days of Thotmes II., of Egypt; in fact, when -he spplied for the position, we engaged him on account of his previous experience. Unfortunately he thinks he can still turn out humor, and inadvertently he slipped in this joke and it passed even the scrutiny of the usually invincible manager of our Thought Bureau. We have already vibrated this explanation to our mental subscriber, who has expressed himself as per- fectly satisfied with it, and we now give it for the bene- fit of the few who have not yet entered into the higher realms of thought. Our mental subscription, by the way, is now ten dollars a year, as already announced. It must also be borne in mind that our mental ad- vertisers are not on our free list. Gee. Ime. Mit. insists upon this. “My position is strong enough,” he declares, “so that I can make it plain to every one of my advertisers that he must pay for his mental LIFE in mental money, in addition to his advertising. The time has gone by when it is necessary for me to have such an enormous free list—always included in statements of circulation— which is the custom among esteemed contemporaries.” The other day we were approached by an advertiser who wished us to issue a million more extra copies of the number containing his advertisement for distribu- tion among his customers. We respectfully declined. Free advertising can only exist in the coarse, phys- Jeal world, With us it is imaginary cash or no business lone. We care nothing for money, but honor is at stake. Besides, it would be impossible to regenerate the advertising business of this county and put it on an imaginary paying basis, unless we thought squarely. Every mental copy of LIFE is paid for mentally by somebody. For example, a thought specialist communicated to us the other day the interesting (to him) fact that when he had finished his mental copy of life he revibrated it mentally to a small circle of Ey friends, who thought they were getting it for nothing. He was not aware, however, that each one of these friends had an un- developed subliminal self, and that our able Thought Bureau collected in advance the imaginary cash for each copy. Concentrate Now and get the imaginary LIFE. Think of GEE. IME. MIT., LIFE’S Thought Bureau. ® K an Co, Sto