WANTED—A Good SERVANT GIRL to whom the highest wages will be paid. Having had great difficulty in procuring good help, on account of the misfortune of having seven small children, we will poison, drown, or otherwise make away with four of them on application of a first class servant girl. Apply at the office of this paper.
What a glorious subject this would have been for Leech or Doyle in the palmy days of Punch, when wit and humour, and not high art and sober earnest, were considered essentials for the illustration of a comic paper, and when jokes were not regarded as ill-timed on the part of a contributor! Historic painters are now the only humourists, and we do hope one, either English or American, may see this, and avail himself of it. The next is from an Iowa periodical, and will show our impartiality to all states in the Union, no one having received an undue share of attention—that is, beyond its merits. It will, besides, bring us up to comparatively recent dates:—
CAUTION.
WHEREAS, one U. T. S. RICE, a small, insignificant-looking whelp, who wears spectacles, carries a large cane, has a limp in his walk, talks smooth, and lies like Satan, has been obtaining money and credit by representing himself as a partner in the firm of Smart and Parrott, or as agent for us: we hereby caution all persons that we are not responsible for any of his acts. He is in no way connected with us, but is a perfect dead beat in every sense of the word.
“Dead beat” is a comprehensive and transatlantic euphemism for the more expressive thief, scoundrel, swindler, or sharper, any one of which, or all four combined, if he so pleases, the “dead beat” may be; and the subject of the Iowa notice seems a full-fledged and duly-qualified representative of the class.
It is hardly necessary to state that in America quacks and quack medicines abound. The papers are full of the advertisements of these men and their nostrums, and it would be quite easy to fill a very large volume with specimens. So much attention has already been given to the charlatans of Europe that we must perforce content ourselves with a very few specimens from the répertoires of their American brethren; but the chief difficulty is not what to select but what to omit. One of the evils which medical impostors in the States pretend to cure is that of drunkenness, and a notice in Harper’s Weekly, which seems to be the chief organ of this kind of advertisers, runs as follows:—
DRUNKARDS, Stop! G. C. Beers, M.D., 670, Washington Street, Boston, Mass., has a medicine that will cure intemperance. Recommended by Judge Russell. Can be given secretly. Send stamp for circular.
Another vendor of specifics gives in the New York Sun this astonishing statement and purely unselfish promise:—
TRIED friends the best of friends. Since the suspension of H. C. Thorpe’s advertisements, the number of deaths by consumption is truly astonishing; advertisements will now appear for the benefit of the afflicted.
But this is nothing compared with the marvellous Riga Balsam, about the incomparable virtues of which we have a long advertisement, which, after all sorts of extraordinary statements, ends thus:—