Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/18

10[April 30, 1859.] that trouble, at any rate. I beg pardon—Destiny (for a consideration of postage stamps) will willingly spare me the trouble. Destiny, if I will patiently bide my time (which I am only too willing to do), will hunt out a woman of the right complexion for me, and will bring her within easy hearing-distance of the great Hum formula, at the proper moment. How can I possibly know this? Just as I know everything else, by putting my trust in advertisements, and not being stingy with my postage stamps. Here is the modest offer of service which Destiny, speaking through the newspapers, makes to mankind:

I send my age, my sex, and my eighteen stamps; and Mr. Nimbus, as the mouthpiece of Destiny, speaks thus encouragingly in return:

I have done. All the advertisements presented here, I must again repeat, are real advertisements. Nothing is changed in any of them but the names of the advertisers. The answers copied are genuine answers obtained, only a short time since, in the customary way, by formal applications. I need say no more. The lesson of wise credulity which I undertook to teach, from the record of my own experience, is now before the world, and I may withdraw again into the healthy, wealthy, and wise retirement from which I have emerged solely for the good of others.

Take a last fond look at me before I go. Behold me immovably fixed in my good opinion of myself, by the discriminating powers of Graphiology; prospectively enriched by the vast future proceeds of my Fabric; thoroughly well grounded in the infallible rules for Courtship and Matrimony, and confidently awaiting the Female of Fair Complexion, on whom I shall practise them. Favoured by these circumstances, lavishly provided for in every possible respect, free from everything in the shape of cares, doubts, and anxieties, who can say that I have not accurately described myself as "the happiest man alive;" and who can venture to dispute that this position of perfect bliss is the obvious and necessary consequence of a wise belief in Advertisements?

ERY PARTICULARLY; the chief engineer of the steam-ship Bagota, who ordered a man to be roasted to death at a furnace. Which order was obeyed, under circumstances of brutality, both active and passive, so abominable, that the earth can hardly be expected to produce grains and fruits after their several kinds while the said engineer remains unhanged upon it.

If this should meet the eye of the magistrate who permitted that murderer to go at large on bail, he is informed that he is not likely to hear of anything to his advantage.

HE REASON WHY London aldermanic justice, in the current month of April, sentenced a ruffian, for a series of perfectly unprovoked assaults of a most violent description, beginning with a respectable young woman and ending with the police in general, to one month's imprisonment only. The attention of Mr. Alderman Mechi is invited.

HE PHILANTHROPISTS who are so benevolent as to open the public-houses, free of expense, at election time. Also, the good Samaritans who pay arrears of rent for people, at about the same period.

N ACTION, an original English play of any description within the limits of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

FEW IDEAS for the walls of the Royal Academy. One hundred cart-loads of fancy dresses, dolls, and old furniture, may be taken in exchange.

OME NEWER TUB for the whale-taking trade, than a cry of Revolution to catch a pension. Address, Buckinghamshire.

NATIONAL RECORD of the death of a true hero— by name—who, on the inundation of a colliery in South Wales, during the present month, rejected the means of immediate escape which were offered to him, and perished, a sacrifice to his own noble efforts to save the workmen committed to his charge.

ANTED, a Baby to Nurse, by a Fond Mother, who has lost Five Infants of her own." An advertisement having appeared in the Times the other day with this beginning, Dr. undertakes to teach, to those persons who prefer the management of their own children, a Fond Mother's System in