Yet, though the numbers were now an established fact, the shopkeepers still clung to the old traditions, and for years continued to display their signs, grand, gorgeous, and gigantic as ever, though affixed to the houses. As late as 1803, a traveller thus writes about London:--“As it is one of the principal secrets of the trade to attract the attention of that tide of people which is constantly ebbing and flowing in the streets, it may easily be conceived that great pains are taken to give a striking form to the signs and devices hanging out before their shops. The whole front of a house is frequently employed for this purpose. Thus, in the vicinity of Ludgate Hill, the house of S----, who has amassed a fortune of £40,000 by selling razors, is daubed with large capitals three feet high, acquainting the public that ‘the most excellent and superb patent razors are sold here.’ As soon, therefore, as a shop has acquired some degree of reputation, the younger brethren of the trade copy its device. A grocer in the city, who had a large _Beehive_ for his sign hanging out before his shop, had allured a great many customers. No sooner were the people seen swarming about this hive than the old signs suddenly disappeared, and Beehives, elegantly gilt, were substituted in their places. Hence the grocer was obliged to insert an advertisement in the newspapers, importing ‘that he was the sole proprietor of the original and celebrated _Beehive_.’ A similar accident befell the shop of one E---- in Cheapside, who has a considerable demand for his goods on account of their cheapness and excellence. The sign of this gentleman consists in a prodigious _Grasshopper_, and as this insect had quickly propagated its species through every part of the city, Mr E---- has in his advertisements repeatedly requested the public to observe that ‘the genuine Grasshopper is only to be found before his warehouse.’ He has, however, been so successful as to persuade several young beginners to enter into engagements with him, on conditions very advantageous to himself, by which they have obtained a licence for hanging out the sign of a Grasshopper before their shops, expressly adding this clause in large capitals, that ‘they are genuine descendants of the renowned and matchless Grasshopper of Mr E---- in Cheapside.’”[41] Such practices as these, however, necessarily gave the deathblow to signboards; for, by reason of this imitation on the part of rival shopkeepers, the main object--distinction and notoriety--was lost. How was a stranger to know which of those innumerable Beehives in the Strand was _the_ Beehive; or which of all those “genuine Grasshoppers” was THE genuine one? So, gradually, the signs began to dwindle away, first in the principal streets, then in the smaller thoroughfares and the suburbs; finally, in the provincial towns also. The publicans only retained them, and even they in the end were satisfied with the name without the sign, _vox et præterea nihil_.