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, with the disposal of which they have had
the honor of being intrusted'! The dweller in towns, who, chained to the
one unceasing, unvarying round of official toil, still sighs for the
country, and, like Virgil, envies the 'fortunati agricolae,' may here
give the reins to his fancy, and indulge his rural proclivities _ad
libitum_.
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