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The second man-trap is more artfully set :

LET, HALF-YEARLY, at the house of an unmarried lady, of cheerful disposition, a light, agreeable chamber, having a pleasant look out upon the street. A middle-aged single gentleman (soliden) preferred. Apply personally, after three o'clock P. M.

The intentions of the unmarried lady of cheerful disposition, who prefers a middle-aged "single" gentleman, but very much prefers a soldier to any youth or widower, are manifestly to convert such a lodger, if she can catch him, into a husband with all convenient speed.

There is no disguise whatever in the next advertisement we shall present :

MAR

ARRIAGE PROPOSAL OF A WIDOW.—The same is childless, of unspotted character, and possessed of property to the value of about 16,000 florins, in real estate. Address, No. 734, Bazaar, Boarmarket. Secrecy guaranteed.

Another lady, whose notification appeared at an earlier date, is even more explicit :

A VERY SOLID, RESPECTABLE MISS, free, between thirty and

forty, not pretty, but still not particularly ill-looking, possessed of a good business, about 700 florins ready money (convention currency), and making a profit of from 20 to 25 florins a month, desires a matrimonial union with a good-looking man of unspotted character, either bachelor or widower, between forty and fifty-five years of age, without children and debts, and having either a situation or a business. Those who may reflect on this proposition with seriousness, are requested to forward their address and a statement of their position, in well sealed letters, to K. B. W., Vienna, Poste Restante, until July 17, 1850.

Besides the matrimonial "wants" of both sexes, the "Want places" column in most German papers is generally full. "Perfect" cooks, "brave" housemaids, and "solid" governesses are continually publishing their qualifications to find masters and mistresses.

We take leave of these matrimonial and general "Wants," to notice a class of advertisers who apparently want nothing but to make themselves notorious. One sentiment comes out with extreme prominence in the advertising department of the German papers-personal vanity. It is by no means uncommon for a person who has no one to congratulate him, no one to puff him off as a dear but absent friend or lover, to advertise himself. A gentleman named Schmidt (the "Smith" of German nomenclature) being most desirous of acquainting Europe that he has obtained a small government appointment, and that he was a member of the defunct National" Versammlung" (Association)-concocts an advertisement, stating that several persons are going about the European Continent (he names no place) contracting debts in his name (namely, " John Smith"), and bidding them beware; for he will not pay any of those debts, for he is not any of the John Smiths aforesaid, but Mr. Under-clerk-ofthe-Berlin-Custom-House John Smith (ex-member, &c.).

We find in the same paper that another gentleman is oppressed with a conviction that his movements are of infinite solicitude and consequence to the whole of Europe. His announcement commences with a startling

NOTICE! I beg my numerous friends and acquaintance in the sev

eral parts of Europe who may be anxious to communicate with ne, to address their letters to me at the seat of war, Schleswig-Holtein.-JULIUS H- Captain of the army of Schleswig-Holstein.

As the gallant captain has not paid us for advertising his whereabouts, we have suppressed all but the initial of his name.

Births are always made known in the papers by the husband; and in the west of Germany, when the male population is increased, the new comer is always described as a

"powerful" boy. Deaths are announced in long-drawn epitaphs, describing at lugubrious length not only the virtues of the deceased, but the inconsolable sorrow of the relatives.

We conclude this Chapter of Advertising Curiosities with the announcement in the Weiner Zeitung of a book "for all classes," that we fear has already had a very extensive sale in the land which originated the bowl and dagger school of literature:

THE

FOR READERS OF ALL CLASSES.

THE DARK DEEDS OF CIVILIZED MAN, with the wonderful interventions of Providence for their discovery and punishment. By Dr. CH. FRED. GREBH, with copperplate engravings. Contents,

I. The Murder of Mr. O'Connor by the Mannings; Husband and Wife.

II. The Fourfold Murder by James Bloomfield Rush; with other trials.

"Give me the ballads of a people," said Voltaire, "and I will write their true history." Had he lived till now, he would have found the advertisements of a people a better index to their social tastes and habits. One supplement of the Times, a file of the Constitutionnel, or a few numbers, of the most extensively circulated of the German papers would be more suggestive of the wants and manners, locomotive, literary, and commercial habits of their various readers, than all the best treatises ever penned.

MR.

The Methusaleh Pill.

R. PRATTLES was a poor man. He had a wife and a large family dependent on him; and his printing business brought him in only a very slender income. His neighbors often wondered how he contrived to make both ends meet. They knew nothing of the struggle that went on within the walls of Mr. Prattle's establishment. The surrounding tradesmen were his customers. He had a shrewd notion of business, however. When the grocer over the way gave him an order to print fifty copies of “Fine Congou at three-and-sixpence," he knew very well that the grocer down the road would soon empower him to print bills advertising "Fine Congou at three-and-fivepence three farthings;" to which would be added the further intelligence that 66 now was the time!" The keener the competition in the neighborhood, the better for Mr. Prattles. Among other orders, Mr. Prattles one day received a command to strike off a thousand labels for "Mr. Smith's Universal Pill." No sooner had he delivered the first batch of labels, than a second order was given for five thousand more labels; and the second order was immediately succeeded by a third, and a third by a fourth.

This influx of business surprised Mr. Prattles; and he began to envy the prosperity of Mr. Smith. Presently it

struck him that it was no difficult matter to manufacture a

pill. But how could he hope to invent a story so plausible as that which enveloped Mr. Smith's pill-boxes. There was a difficulty here. Mr. Smith had fortified himself in every possible way. He had selected the most obscure villages of the country from the gazetteer, and had written very characteristic testimonials from imaginary patients residing near these remote localities. His pill was-these spurious documents declared-an infallible cure for every disease. He tacked to his pill the properties of the entire pharmacopoeia. Mr. Smith's pill was advertised to accomplish every thing of which medical science was capable. The history of Mr. Smith's Pill was a narrative of blessings. conferred upon frail mortality. By the virtues of Mr. Smith's Pill John Dobbins of Cwyrytchcmwll, in Wales, had been cured of a bad leg, which had baffled the ingenuity of the first surgeons in the country. Mr. Smith's Pill restored Miss Brown of Briar Cottage, near Battledore-cum-Shuttlecock, to life, when the rattles were in her throat. It cured asthma, consumption, water on the brain, dropsy and influenza; it was infallible in scarlet fever, yellow jaundice, and blue cholera, gout, rheumatism, tic-doloreux, sciatica, locked jaw, and cancer invariably disappeared from every patient respectively and concurrently afflicted with any or all of these diseases, after the third box.

Mr. Smith's ingenuity was not even exhausted with these arrangements. He understood his business perfectly, and felt that, in order to make his pill go down, it was necessary to secure the patronage of a peer of the realm With this view he entered into negotiations with a poor nobleman residing abroad. The transaction was a long time

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