Frog in Your Throat

Frog in Your Throat was a popular brand of throat lozenges at the turn of the century.  They printed a number of cards like this one around 1905 that generally featured a lovely lady in the foreground and a leering frog in the background. The lozenges contained licorice, coltsfoot, wild cherry bark, horehound, cubeb, capsicum, menthol, potassium bitartrate, peppermint, sugar, and other aromatics. Here's a link to a website that shows a nice collection of Frog in Your Throat ephemera.

The back of the card is nice too. It's labeled as a Private Mailing Card instead of a postcard. Prior to the congressional act in 1898, the US Government had a monopoly on printing postcards. After 1898, private mailing cards were allowed, but until 1907 only the address and no message was allowed on the back of the card. That means that a lot of these cards are mysterious; unless the sender wrote on the picture side, there's little indication of who sent it.

While we don't know who sent the card, we do know that it was sent to Miss Prudence Davis of Portland, Maine. A short search revealed that Prudence Augusta Davis (of the same address) studied at Smith College and married Melville H. Marston on Thursday, November 6, 1913.

Leather Postcard

Here's a leather postcard with a strange little saying on the front. The address on the back appears to be burned in. Leather postcards were popular at the turn of the century. Although many of the designs are very beautiful and interesting, I can't say they're among my favorites. For whatever reason, I prefer paper postcards.  This one's pretty interesting though.

Tram Tuesday - Philadelphia

This card has a lot to offer. It has the full names and mailing addresses of both the sender and the recipient. Although there is no stamp or postmark, it appears that the card was sent in 1910. Nettie Smith of Philadelphia sent the card to Miss Julia Schneider in Los Angeles. Maybe they were in secretarial school together, because Nettie seemed to be confident that Julia could read her shorthand.  Does anyone still read (or write) shorthand?

It's a little sad to see those old Philly streetcars, because the extensive system that Philly once had is no longer there. I think that there is a greater sense of loss in Philadelphia than in some of the other places where streetcars have been replaced by buses. I hope they make a comeback.

Here's the back of the card.

If you want to read more about the current issues regarding Philadelphia's streetcar system, you may want to check out Eric Miller's The New Colonist.