Houses of small size and ladies of all sizes
employ the Fabric. What returns pour in? Look
at the population of houses and ladies, and say
Seventy Millions Sterling per annum. Add
foreign houses and foreign ladies, under the
head of Exports, and say Thirty Millions per
annum more. Is this too much for the ordinary
mind to embrace? It is very good. The
patentee is perfectly willing to descend the scale at
a jump; to address the narrowest comprehension;
and to knock off nine-tenths. Remainder,
Ten Millions. Say that " the royalty" will be
thirty per cent., and "such profit would give
three millions of pounds sterling to be divided
among the shareholders." Simple, as the
simplest sum in the Multiplication Table: simple
as two and two make four.

I am aware that the obstinate incredulity of
the age will inquire why the fortunate Patentee
does not keep these prodigious returns to
himself. How base is Suspicion! How easily, in
this instance, is it answered and rebuked! The
Patentee refrains from keeping the returns to
himself, because he doesn't want money. His
lithographed circular informs me—really and
truly does inform me, and will inform you
if you have to do with him—that he has had
"a good fortune" left him, and that he is " heir
to several thousand pounds a year." With
these means at his disposal, he might of course
work his inestimable patent with his own
resources. But no!—he will let the public in.
What a man! How noble his handwriting must
be, in a graphiological point of view! What
phrases are grateful enough to acknowledge his
personal kindness in issuing shares to me at
"the totally-inadequate sum"—to use his own
modest words—of five shillings each? Happy,
happy day, when I and the Fabric and the
Patentee were all three introduced to one
another!

When a man is so fortunate as to know
himself, from the height of his " volatile liveliness"
to the depth of his " melancholy tenderness"
—as I know myself—when, elevated on a
multiform Fabric, he looks down from the
regions of perpetual wealth on the narrow
necessities of the work-a-day world beneath
him—but one other action is left for that man
to perform, if he wishes to make the sum of his
earthly felicity complete. The ladies will already
have anticipated that the action which I now
refer to as final may be comprehended in one
word—Marriage.

The course of all disbelievers in advertisements,
where they are brought face to face with this
grand emergency, is more or less tortuous,
troubled, lengthy, and uncertain. No man of
this unhappy stamp can fall in love, bill and coo,
and finally get himself married, without a
considerable amount of doubt, vexation, and
disappointment occurring at one period or other in
the general transaction of his amatory affairs.
Through want of faith and postage stamps,
mankind have agreed to recognise these very
disagreeable drawbacks as so many inevitable
misfortunes: dozens of popular proverbs assert
their necessary existence, and nine-tenths of our
successful novels are filled with the sympathetic
recital of them in successions of hysterical
chapters. And yet, singular as it may appear, the most
cursory reference to the advertising columns of
the newspapers is sufficient to show the fallacy
of this view, if readers would only exercise (as
I do) their faculties of implicit belief. As there
are infallible secrets for discovering character by
handwriting, and making fortunes by Fabrics,
so there are other infallible secrets for falling in
love with the right woman, fascinating her in
the right way, and proposing to her at the right
time, which render doubt, disappointment, or
hesitation, at any period of the business, so
many absolute impossibilities. Once again, let
me confute incredulous humanity, by quoting
my own happy experience.

Now, mark. I think it desirable to settle in
life. Good. Do I range over my whole
acquaintance; do I frequent balls, concerts, and
public promenades; do I spend long days in
wearisome country-houses, and sun myself
persistently at the watering-places of England—all
for the purpose of finding a woman to marry?
I am too wise to give myself any such absurd
amount of trouble. I simply start my preliminary
operations by answering the following
advertisement:

"To THE UNMARRIED.—If you wish to Marry,
send a stamped-addressed envelope to the Advertiser,
who will put you in possession of a Secret by
means of which you can win the affections of as
many of the opposite sex as your heart may desire.
This is suitable for either sex; for the old or young,
rich or poor, whether of prepossessing appearance or
otherwise.—Address, Mr. Flam, London."

When the answer reaches me, I find Mr. Flam
—although undoubtedly a benefactor to
mankind—to be scarcely so ready of access and so
expansive in his nature as the Proprietor of the
Fabric. Instead of sending me the Secret, he
transmits a printed paper, informing me that he
wants two shillings worth of postage stamps
first. To my mind, it seems strange that he
should have omitted to mention this in the
Advertisement. But I send the stamps,
nevertheless; and get the Secret back from Mr. Flam, in
the form of a printed paper. Half of this paper
is addressed to the fair sex, and is therefore, I
fear, of no use to me. The other half, however,
addresses the lords of the creation; and I find
the Secret summed up at the end, for their
benefit, in these few but most remarkable
words:

"To THE MALE SEX.—If a woman is clean and
neat in her dress, respects the Sabbath, and is dutiful
towards her parents, happy will be the man who makes
her his wife."

Most astonishing! All great discoveries are
simple. Is it not amazing that nobody should
have had the smallest suspicion of the sublime
truth expressed above, until Mr. Flam suddenly
hit on it? How cheap, too—how scandalously
cheap at two shillings! And this is the man