give the subjoined letter from an enterprising undertaker in Illinois to a sick man: “Dear sir, having positive proof that you are rapidly approaching Death’s gate, I have, therefore, thought it not imprudent to call your attention to the inclosed advertisement of my abundant stock of ready-made coffins, and desire to make the suggestion that you signify to your friends a wish for the purchase of your burial outfit at my establishment.” And thereon followed an elaborate list of the essentials to a first-class funeral, the reader having nothing to do but to supply the corpse. Apropos of supply, the following from a Chicago confectioner’s notice is worthy of remark: “Families supplied by the quart or gallon.” This ostensibly refers to olives, but to us it seems very suggestive of olive branches. Occasionally, in running through the papers, one is surprised at the appetite of a lady who wants “to take a gentleman for breakfast and tea;” at the single-mindedness of a boarding-house keeper who advertises that “single gentlemen are furnished with pleasant rooms, also one or two gentlemen with wives;” or the boldness of a merchant who, in a free country, openly gives notice that there is “wanted—a woman to sell on commission.”
We have already referred to the “editorials” which have a more or less remote connection with advertisements, and now select two examples with which to illustrate our meaning. They are of very opposite characters, and will serve to give both extremes, between which all sorts of puffs may find classification. The first is very common. Says the editor of a Yankee paper:—
A correspondent wants to know what kind of a broom the young lady in the novel used when she swept back the ringlets from her classic brow. We don’t know, and shouldn’t answer if we did. We