Not long ago, a morning paper contained an announcement that a lady going abroad would give “a medical man” £100 a year to look after “a favourite spaniel dog” during her absence. This may not be funny, but it is certainly curious, and in these days, when starvation and misery are rampant, when men are to be found who out of sheer love kill their children rather than trust them to the tender mercies of the parish officials, and when these same officials are proved guilty of constructive homicide, it is indeed noticeable. A kindred advertisement, also real and unexaggerated, asks for “an accomplished poodle nurse. Wages £1 per week.” This has double claims upon our attention here, for in addition to the amount offered for such work, there is a doubt as to the actual thing required. Is it a nurse for accomplished poodles, or an accomplished nurse? And, if the latter, what in the name of goodness and common sense is accomplishment at such work? Do poodles require peculiar nursery rhymes and lullabies, or are they nursed, as a vulgar error has it about West-country babies, head downwards? This is not the exact expression used with regard to the infants; but it will do. We will conclude this short list of peculiarities with two which deserve notice. The first is the notice of a marriage, which ends, “No cards, no cake, no wine.” This is evidently intended for friends other than those “at a distance,” whose polite attention is so constantly invoked. The remaining specimen appeared in the Irish Times, and runs thus: “To Insurance Offices.—Whatever office the late William H. O’Connell, M.D. life was insured will please to communicate or call on his widow, 23 South Frederick Street, without delay.” One hardly knows which to admire most, the style or the insouciance of the demand.
Of curious advertisements which are such independent of errors, selfishness, or moral obliquity, we have in the