This game makes you realize that advertisements comprise every phase of your life, private and official, and follow you through all your days on earth, beginning with the announcement of your birth and ending after you have died "The family of the late Mr. Reader wish to extend their grat thanks for sympathy and the many beautiful flowers sent during their recent sad bereavement..."
In between your mother buys baby clothing for you and advertiser's powdered full-cream milk because you look so pale), a nurse is engaged for you and later teachers, you find a girl and a position and a house to live in, an adviser for your investments, and a fortune-teller to inform you how to retrieve your losses. I claim that a collection of the adver-fisements you answered or inserted m a paper during your lifetime would give away the complete story of your life, your struggles and joys, achievements and failures.
Sometimes single advertisements are tell-tales in themselves. When, a few days ago, a antique German linen chest (1673)" was offered for sale you need not have a writer' imagination to guess the whole pig nant story of a refugee. More sober, but equally telling dinner. Box.
"German given lessons for tiffin. dark, and she was small and fair and they met through that advert which he read when he was just at the point of leaving for America where he was expected by another young lady; kisses, tears. envy, sensation. bullet-proof vests).
"Lady of quiet habits. independent, extremely lonely, desires acquaintance with an independent Allied gentleman of good education and social standing.
Advertised in the same week as the linen chest.)
Sometimes refugee adver sements are quite amusing and show how strangely history has twisted their lives "Mr. Wang, Chinese, who has resided as my guest in my country house near Berlin for several weeks in summer 1920, is requested kindly to communicate' with.... East Seward Road..."
That was in mid-January of this year. Had she looked through the respective columns one month before that date she would have found the following suitable insertion "Educated Canadian, 35, just arrived, club member, social position, not lonely, desires to meet refined lady..."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.