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Lover's Leap
by Ellis Parker Butler
from Harper's Monthly Magazine, June, 1919
This was back in the years when I was going about the country getting up "Beautifuls." That was what we called them. They were really local write-ups with about six half-tone engravings of Main Street and bits of local scenery that we got nothing for, and half a hundred or more portraits of prominent citizens, pictures of oatmeal-mills, banks, and so on, that cost us five dollars and for which we collected twenty-five dollars apiece, sometimes more. There were twenty or so of us in the business, working on salary, and sent out by the Cities Beautiful Company, of Lima, Ohio. We went into a town, made a contract with some local newspaper, and set to work. Usually there were ten pages of local history and general "write-up" stuff, followed by all the way from forty to one hundred pages of paid advertising, either display or in the form of write-ups.
We stuck pretty close to sample in all cases. Every book was a "Beautiful" -- Kalamazoo Beautiful, Oconomowoc Beautiful, Columbus Junction Beautiful, and so on. The six half-tone engravings followed a rule, too. There was always "Main Street Seen from the Corner of Third Avenue and Elm Street," or something of the sort; there was always the High School; there was always the City Hall. Nine times out of ten one of the three remaining pictures -- which were scenic -- included a Lover's Leap.
Lover's Leap was a good card, always. There was always an Indian legend, and always the same one. If there was no legend we wrote one, and it was again always the same one. It was our only way of getting romance into the "Beautifuls," and it made a hit