t appeals to all classes. This is the advertisements. The man who
wishes to buy may here ascertain whither he must bend his steps to
obtain the article he desires, and the man who wishes to sell may here
meet with a purchaser; and it is truly wonderful to observe how the two
great requirements of demand and supply, in all their varied
ramifications, are satisfied or seem to be satisfied in these columns.
If one may put faith in them, it is possible to gratify every mortal
wish and every mortal want through their instrumentality, on one
condition, and that condition is--money. But even this condition may be
satisfied through the same medium. Are there not untold fortunes
invested in Government securities and unclaimed for years, only waiting
for the lawful owners or rightful heirs to come forward and obtain them
through the agency of those obliging gentlemen who make it their
business to investigate such matters? Are there not also numbers of
benevolent philanthropists eagerly longing for opportunities to lend
money in large or small amounts, on personal security only, to such
persons even as are not fortunate enough to be rightful owners or lawful
heirs? The curious part of the affair, however, is that there are also
so many people who want to borrow money upon the same terms. Do these
two classes, we wonder, ever come together through the intervention of
the advertisement, and does the result wished for on both sides follow,
or does it not? If it does, why need both sets of advertisements appear
at all? And if it does not, what is the use of repeating either of them
day after day and week after week? The man of imagination must take
especial delight in the advertising columns. What splendid feasts they
afford him to banquet upon! Some of them, in a few pithy lines, contain
the plot of a three-volume novel or the materials for a grand sensation
melodrama. What tragedies and what comedies he may weave out of one or
two mysterious and almost unintelligible sentences! What reveries he may
indulge in, what castles in the air--the most harmless and inexpensive
of building operations--he may construct, provided he start with the
hypothesis, 'If I were to buy this,' or 'If I were to invest in that,'
and all the time he has neither the intention nor the ability of
purchasing the one or of investing in the other! How seductive are the
notifications by auctioneers and land agents of the 'charming and
valuable territorial estates, w