A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
When a man tells you, point blank, that he is selling an article for the profit of it, believe him; but when he asserts that he is advertising and offering a remedy solely for the public good, for the benefit of suffering humanity, he is a liar. Beware of such.
Furthermore, when he publishes an advertisement in every paper in the land, announcing that himself having been miraculously or “providentially” cured of a variety of diseases by a certain compound, the prescription for which he will send free to any address, you should hesitate, until satisfied of the disinterestedness of the party, and meantime ask yourself the following question: “Provided this be true, why don’t the unparalleled benevolent gentleman publish the recipe, which would cost so much less than this persistent advertising ‘that he will send it to any requiring it’? And you are next led to ask,—
“Where is the ‘dodge’? For money is what he is after.”
A reverend (?), a scoundrel, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” advertises in nearly every paper you chance to notice, especially religious newspapers, a remedy he discovered while a missionary to some foreign country, that cured him of a variety of diseases, the recipe for which medicine he will send to any address, free of charge.
“Here is the ‘Old Sands of Life’ dodge,” I said, “which I had the satisfaction of exposing fourteen years ago.”
The reader may recollect the advertisement of “A Retired Physician, seventy-five years of age, whose sands of life had nearly run out,” who advertised so extensively a remedy which cured his daughter, etc., which remedy he would send free, to the afflicted, on application.
I investigated his “little fraud.” I found, instead of an old man “seventy-five years of age,” a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty. He was no reverend. He had no daughter. He was a tall, gaunt, profane, tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed fellow, with a bad impediment in his speech from loss of palate, whose name was Oliver Phipps Brown, a printer by trade, who formerly worked as journeyman in the Courant office, Hartford, Conn. The police finally got hold of him, and broke up the swindle.
OLD “SANDS OF LIFE.”