162 MISADVENTURES OF A I.OVER. 



application. It is hoped no male or female will exhibit any imper- 

 tinent curiosity on the occasion. Address A. B , 23 Fetter Lane, 

 Fleet Street. No unpaid letters will be received." 



This duly made its appearance. Corder had but forty-five appli- 

 cations in consequence of his advertisement ; I had nearly double 

 that number, which circumstance I ascribed partly to the greater 

 respectability of the medium of publicity I had employed,*and partly 

 to the fact that, while Corder debarred all from applying who had 

 red hair, gray eyes, and sundry other things he considered personal 

 blemishes, and, moreover, held up beauty, education, and a pretty 

 round sum as a fortune, *as sine qua nons, I made no stipulations 

 whatever. My appeal to the hearts of the sex was clogged with no 

 conditions. I wanted a wife : with that want supplied I was willing 

 to be satisfied. 



At this time I lodged with an old woman, whose house I had en- 

 tered eight days before. I mentioned to her, immediately on send- 

 ing the advertisement to the Herald Office , that I expected early 

 next day several letters, desiring her to receive such as should come, 

 and bring them up-stairs. My landlady nodded assent. Just as 

 eleven o'clock forenoon chimed on St. Dunstan's, I heard a rap at the 

 door. On my landlady opening it a thickly spoken lad enquired if 

 there were any A. B's. within. " A. B. ! no ; there's no A. B. nor 

 B. C. here," said the old woman somewhat ill-naturedly. " Bring the 

 letter to me, bring the letter to me," cried I, popping my head a little 

 bit down-stairs. My landlady brought the epistle up. I forgot to 

 apprise her, on the previous evening, that the letters I expected would 

 be mostly, if not altogether, for a certain reason, addressed A. B. I 

 then repeated my request that all letters so addressed should be brought 

 to me immediately. She had scarcely got down-stairs, and shut the 

 outer door, when another knock was heard. It was another A. B. 

 letter, which of course was directly brought up-stairs to me. In short, 

 for an hour after, epistles in answer to my advertisement were 

 brought up at the rate of one per minute : in one instance two ar- 

 rived at once. By the time my landlady had brought me up twelve 

 or fourteen she evidently began to get surprised and alarmed at the 

 number of A. B. letters ; by the time she had delivered the twentieth 

 for it will be observed that she had hardly got down-stairs when 

 there was some new bearer of an A. B. epistle rapping at the door 

 by the time, I say, she had delivered the twentieth, the good old 

 woman got fairly out of breath. When she came the length of No. 

 30, she began to think her best way would be to bring up several at 

 a time, which would of course lessen the frequency of her up-stair 

 journeys. By the time the fortieth epistle arrived, she commenced 

 the system of bringing up six at once. By this time I myself had 

 become dreadfully alarmed. I began to think I had done some ex- 

 cessively foolish action, and that surely all the unmarried ladies in 

 London had all of a sudden become correspondents of mine. I grew 

 quite sick of love epistles. I could almost have wished both them 

 and their fair inditers at the antipodes. " Here is too much of a 

 good thing," ?aid I emphatically to myself. While in this agony of 

 uneasiness at the Mont Blanc of letters piled up on the table before 



