Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/45

 which I have never shot anything! Remove it from above my chimneypiece, and take a load from my heart!"

The advertisers who seek to make their wants known through the pages of The Exchange and Mart, seem to possess many characteristics in common. The same articles appear to be popular and unpopular with them. They all want sealskin jackets and sewing-machines, and none of them want incomplete pieces of Berlin wool work, and "boxes of oil paints nearly new." There is, by the way, a very brisk desire to get rid of these last, suggesting the idea that a considerable proportion of the advertisers have been the victims of a false impression that they had a vocation for art. Sometimes the revulsion of feeling brought about by the acquirement of these "paints" is very strong indeed, as in the case of an advertiser in the twentieth number of The Exchange, who suddenly discovers, after cultivating for a brief space the peaceful arts that soften men's manners, a certain blood-thirsty tendency, at once incongruous and terrible. "I have," says this gentleman, "an oil-paint box almost complete, and very little used. I want a small breech-loading revolver."

Among the characteristics shared in common by the clients of the Exchange journal must be noted a wonderful and touching hopefulness. They are so inexplicably sanguine. They see nothing outrageous in the idea of getting new lamps for old ones. The lamps they have to dispose of are very old ones, and they know it. The wares they offer for competition are, for the most part, no doubt, defective, imperfect, and disappointing; yet they expect that the objects which they are to get in exchange for them are to possess none of those qualities. Here is a wonderful instance of this hopefulness. It is headed "!"

"Three pure white Sicilian goats to be exchanged for a lock-stitch sewing-machine, Wilson preferred, in perfect condition."

A gentleman or lady possessed of a sewing-machine, by the best maker, in perfect condition, is expected to part with it, and to receive in return—three terrible goats! Is this a thing likely to happen? Is it likely, again, that the advertiser who has "a fine tame fox, which he wishes to exchange for a gold watch or guard," will meet with a customer? Or that the proprietor of an ivory card-case is to be able to exchange it, or "two pieces of Chinese and Japanese embroidery" for a "Cleopatra" or a "Wanzer" sewing-machine, in good order?

These sewing-machines are in continual request. In one copy of The Exchange there are no less than eleven advertisements for these useful articles, for which the most various and incongruous things—guitars, celestial and terrestrial globes, bantam cocks, and magic lanterns, among the rest—are offered in exchange.

This incongruity between the object offered and that which is advertised for, is another of the curiosities of advertisement which the new journal supplies us with. Besides such instances as have been already mentioned, we find such notices as the following, in plenty: "Butterdish of carved white wood, with green glass centre, quite new, never used, cost eight shillings and sixpence. To exchange for Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte; or a pair of lady's skates, or a round brass American clock, or a carved fretwork brooch, or Tennyson's poems." "I will give forty pencil drawings," says one advertiser, "all good, some excellent, for twelve pounds of good honey!" Raising the Maypole,' quite new," says another; "size, forty inches by thirty inches. Wanted blankets, or offers." Another advertiser wishes to change a pair of archery targets for a good guitar; another, to become possessed of a small revolver in place of Knight's Natural History; another to exchange a handsome lever gold watch and seals, for—a cow!

Among the remarkable points to which one's attention is frequently drawn in considering these notices, is the exceeding popularity of sealskin. The advertisements for sealskin jackets, sealskin muffs, sealskin waistcoats, sealskin purses, follow one another in close succession, and are even more numerous than those for sewing-machines. Neither do the owners of the former, any more than the latter, appear to tire of such possessions, or wish to be rid of them. There are no instances of advertisers wishing to part, either with sealskin jackets or sewing-machines.

Occupying ourselves still with the especial peculiarities developed in the columns of this curious periodical, one cannot help noticing what a rare quality accuracy and intelligibility in written description is. This is manifested by the Exchange advertisers, both in describing the objects they wish to part with, and those of which they desire to become possessed. Thus, there are advertisers who announce their possession of a "very good long thick watchchain," without specifying of what metal it is composed; others, who are in want of a yard "or so" of piece silk; others, who yearn for a large new album, "to hold four in a page"—four what? Some of the descriptions, too, are very minute in detail, and some characterised by a certain conscientiousness. A set of steel ornaments, for instance, which are "slightly rusty," are advertised; and a lace shawl, a "little soiled;" while one advertiser, in her desire to be strictly honest, enters into quite a little narrative of the autobiographical sort: "I have," she says, "a good bracelet, bought at the Exhibition in '62. I do not know of what metal it is made, but I think it cannot be plated, as I have worn one bought at the same time, a great deal, and it has not in the least turned colour."

Some people are possessed of very hopeless goods indeed, and seem to be perfectly conscious of their unfortunate position. Here is an unhappy case: "I have ten gross of plate-powder, each in packet boxes. I wish to exchange for anything useful. Open to offers." And here another: "I have about a hundred different, mostly freethought, pamphlets, average price sixpence, which I would exchange for anything useful worth a guinea."