If it really is a genuine communication, its scope must be extremely limited. Many of the mysterious advertisements which appear in the usual style are very noticeable, though of late the art has fallen a prey to the vendors of quack medicines and cheap books, and the managers of some theatres and music-halls. What has been characterised, and with every probability of truth, as the most ghastly advertisement that ever appeared in a public journal is the following, which is taken from the Times of the year 1845. It certainly is a most frightful paragraph:—
TO THE PARTY WHO POSTS HIS LETTERS IN PRINCE’S STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE.—Your family is now in a state of excitement unbearable. Your attention is called to an advertisement in Wednesday’s Morning Advertiser, headed “A body found drowned at Deptford.” After your avowal to your friend as to what you might do, he has been to see the decomposed remains, accompanied by others. The features are gone; but there are marks on the arm; so that unless they hear from you to-day, it will satisfy them that the remains are those of their misguided relative, and steps will be directly taken to place them in the family vault, as they cannot bear the idea of a pauper’s funeral.
The most horrible subject has, however, a ludicrous side, and the idea of the decomposed remains objecting to parochial interference is as dreadfully funny as the matter generally is dreadfully shocking. In another notice, five years later, there is, as it were, a plaintive moan, the cry of a weak and distressed woman, who has no “strong mind” to enable her to bear up against infidelity and loss. Listen to it:—
THE one-winged Dove must die unless the Crane returns to be a shield against her enemies.
Far different is the next, which is a couple of years later, and which displays as much strength of purpose and self-dependence as its forerunner betrays