This stereotyped advertisement has a flavour of the drum and cymbals of the mountebank. Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, walk up and show your tongues and have your pulses felt.
Further down, this same medical gentleman falls into the style of the chimney-sweep, anxious to enlarge his connection: "He thanks his many friends and patrons for the kindness and patronage bestowed upon him, and trusts, by pursuance of the same honourable business and professional methods and efforts, to fully merit a continuance of same."
Many a briefless man of the law sends his card around to the occupants of the various prisons. As an improvement upon this, I would suggest (and I do not doubt it has been already done) something in the style of Dr. R.'s puff:
"Mr. X., advocate, presents his compliments to the gentlemen of the light finger, and hopes to be honoured with their confidence. No fees unless the case is won. Mr. X. is eloquent, persuasive, tender, pathetic, impulsive, violent, just as the case may demand. He can disconcert witnesses and touch the jury. Many great criminals owe him their liberty and even their lives."
In the smoking-room of the Germanic one day, an American, who sat near me, said, addressing me:
"I believe you are going to America to lecture, sir?"
"Yes," I replied, "I am."
"Who is booming your show, may I ask?" he said in the most natural way in the world.
I must have stared at him like a rustic, being utterly at a loss to understand what he meant.