A GENTLEMAN who, the twentieth instant, had the honour to conduct a lady out of a boat at Whitehall Stairs, desires to know when he may wait on her to disclose a matter of concern. A letter directed to Mr Samuel Reeves, to be left with Mr May, at the Golden Head, the upper end of New Southampton Street, Covent Garden.
There are about this time many instances appearing in the notice columns of what has been called love at first sight, though from the fact that advertisements had to bring their influence to bear on the passion, it looks as though the impression took some time to fix itself. Otherwise the declaration might have been made at once, unless, indeed, timidity prevented it. Perhaps, too, the occasional presence of a gentleman companion might have deterred these inflammable youths from prosecuting their suits and persecuting the objects of their temporary adoration. Just after the foregoing we come upon a slave advertisement couched in the following terms:—
A BLACK boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis’s Coffee house in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange.
There is no mincing the matter about this, and as, at the same time, a very extensive traffic was carried on in “white flesh” for the plantations, the advertiser would doubtless have regarded sympathy with his property as not only idiotic but offensive. And then we light on what must be regarded as an advertisement, though it emanates from the editorial sanctum, and is redolent of that humour which, first identified with the Tatler, has never yet been surpassed, and, as many still say, never equalled:—
ANY ladies who have any particular stories of their acquaintance which they are willing privately to make public, may send ’em by the penny post to Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., enclosed to Mr John Morpheu, near Stationers’ Hall.