B. F. Johnson real photo illustrated circular to agents

"Dear Friend: How-d' y-do?" A two-page letter, ditto-printed on watermarked paper, 12 x 8.5 inches. Very Good with light toning and soil at the folds. Featuring an albumen portrait, just under 2 x 1.5 inches, inserted at the sentence, "It can be done to better advantage, I am sure, if we stand face to face, looking each other in the eye, so here I am, dressed in my best Sunday clothes."

In addition to the graphic novelty, the letter is interesting as a version of "job training" for canvassers, who must "have a warm, earnest description at your tongue's end so you can apply it it in an easy, natural manner." He names the benefits of canvassing: "the outdoor exercise that stirs your blood and sends it bounding through your system with new energy and force--contact with others which quickens the intellect and increases your business capacity--opportunities to help and cheer others which will enlarge your sympathies."

Parts of the letter sound like a father trying to motivate a deadbeat son ("...somehow what I have said to you in the past hasn't seemed to take hold... I don't think you begin to realize what can be accomplished..."); but Johnson's youthful portrait seems to be more like a call to arms for the generation of men raised in the aftermath of the Civil War; the literal sons of the Confederacy. "The time has come for strong, earnest, organized effort on the part of those who have pluck and energy to win their way..." 

The message is left broad enough to apply to any canvassing book: "We have placed in your hands a grand, good book, and one of the strongest sellers ever published in this country." At the time, Christ in the Camp; or, Religion in Lee's Army was a bestseller; as well as The Davis Memorial Volume; or, Our Dead President, Jefferson Davis. B. F. Johnson became best known for their series of biographical readers featuring Confederate heroes.