QUEER ADVERTISERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 42, 25 June 1913, Page 4

QUEER ADVERTISERS.

I People who advertise for strange | things are not uncommon. That very I sensible section of the community which reads carefully the advertisements as well as the cable messages and other news items in the daily press often gains a lot of knowledge and not a little fun. In New Zealand the begging advertiser, so familiar to the "agony" columns of the big London journals, has not yet made his presence very seriously felt, but at Home it is astonishing how many persons there are who go so far as to insert advertisements in the daily papers drawing attention to their; ' readiness to receive gifts, small or! large. A number of instances may bo cited at random, all, highly amusing, showing as they do astounding confidence in : the existence of .weaK thy persons who .are looking out-jfor opportunities to "unload.!' Many o! these appeal's come from clergymen, says the London correspondent of the "Age," others again from "ladies of genteel birth" fallen on evil days, or from young gentlemen of "good education and refinement," to whose delicate sensibilities the very suggestion of "earning a living" is repugnant. All tiie applicants agree in the one mat ter—that of wanting money. A clergyman will ask some kind person

to ionvard £2O to enable liim to take a much-needed holiday at the seaside, or another will want £IOO or more, wherewith to complete his son's education, or provide his daughter with a fitting trousseau. Curates frequently ask foi bicycles to speed them in the performance of their parochial duties, while elder ones implore the gift of a little pony carriage not forgetting the pony. The genteel ladies desire to tide over an imminent crisis in

their affairs, or to go abroad for the ! sake of ailing health. One university i man, who evidently had no aspirations to the "dignity of labour," advertised as follows:—"An Oxford man j (scholar), tired of being poor, wishes ] to be adopted by wealthy people." Noi many days later, in the same columns there appeared:—"Another Oxford man (scholar), still more tired of being poor, wishes to be adopted by even wealthier people." The palm for cool cheek ought to be awarded to the advertiser who asks for the loan of £1,000,000. The demand was so extraordinary that "The Times" deemed it worthy of mention in their leading columns at the time. This applicant (who headed his advertisement: "To Millionaires Only") declared that he merely desired to relieve over-loaded plutocrats of their superfluous riches "in order that the fallacy of 'the bur-

den of wealth' may be proved." Th millionaires, strange to say. answere

not a word!