CHAPTER XLVIII

MR. CRACKNEL CAULDFIELD

WHAT a wonderful institution is “The Times!” It is a perfect modern miracle. It has kept increasing for the last five-and-twenty years, till it is nearly the size of the table-cloth on which it is laid every morning at breakfast-time. No one feels fit to confront his fellow-men until he has mastered its leading contents. Through its medium every wish may be announced, and every want supplied. The second column of the supplement contains hints for a hundred novels. The open, the mysterious, the anxious, the forgiving, the mandatory, the admonitory, the conciliatory. Take a sample— “Folly.—All going on well: write immediately,” &c.

“S. T. B.—Hereford—write immediately to M. J., Farnham,” &c.

“My dear sister, I arrived in town on the 1st, and found,” &c.

“P. Q. Gratefully acknowledges your bounty, most acceptable—very ill,” &c.

Then comes a whole list of losses:

“Lost, a terrier; a letter; a portmanteau; a portmonnaie; a brooch; a locket.”

Next the sentimental:

“If the gentleman who travelled in the 3.5 p.m. train, &c., to, &c., with a lady in a pink bonnet and ermine tippet, will,” &c.

Followed by:

“Found a red and white pointer dog,” &c.

“If this should meet the eye of,” &c.

“Missing friends in Australia,” &c.

“To heirs at law.”

“Caution to purchasers of revolvers.”

And so on to the bottom of the column.

Then the general announcements include almost every possible requirement: Houses, horses, estates, cooks, coals, coachmen, carriages, straw, stockings, steam-boats, candles, canaries, cows, books, bottles, boots, clocks, clothing, chickens, soap, sugar, shipments, towels, trousers, teeth, corsets, crinoline, cottage-pianos, bedsteads, brandy, Brighton, microscopes, mangles, and mustard; harmoniums, harrows, and hyacinths; umbrellas, and rollers—every imaginable article, and so arranged too, that a person knows exactly into which folds of the tablecloth to look for the advertisement of what he requires.

The pen and ink portrait gallery too, is very perfect, and often severely like. It must be very inconvenient to an absconding gentleman to find “one hundred pounds” reward offered for his apprehension, with some such minute description of his person as the following: “He is about 60 years of age; 5 feet 9 or 10 inches high; florid complexion; stout made; gray hair (thick bushy whiskers, which he sometimes dyes); walks very erect, with a short quick step, and wears a silk hat with flat brim, placed much over his eyes.” After reading that, we should think the gentleman would very soon give up dyeing his whiskers, and have his hat on the back of his head like a lady’s bonnet.

This department, we are sorry to say, is sometimes used for entrapping the confiding and unwary. We often see advertisements stating that if Jeremiah Waddle or Jonathan Lameduck, or some such gentleman, will apply to—say Mr. Thomas Trueman’s, in Red Lion Square, he will hear of something greatly to his advantage, and Jerry or Jonathan, as the case may be, on arriving breathless at Trueman’s, fancying himself master of a sack full of sovereigns, finds himself in the grasp of a sheriff’s officer, who politely informs him that it will be greatly to his advantage to pay his debts!

Still the publicity of “The Times” is truly invaluable, and though there are those who affect to discard the supplement, and indeed to read only the City article or the summary, there are others who work steadily through every column from births, deaths, and marriages to “Francis Goodlake,” &c., at the end.

When Mr. Saplington, in pursuance of our Banker’s imperative requirements, had exhausted every means of finding the much wanted man, he bethought him of appealing to what ought to have been his first move, and offering a reward for his discovery. Accordingly, an advertisement appeared in the all-potent second column of “The Times,” announcing that if Mr. Cracknel Cauldfield, formerly of Mayfield, then of Harwich, afterwards of Horncastle, and late of Leominster (for Mr. Saplington had had a good holding scent, though he never could hunt up to his man), would send his then address, &c., he would receive ten pounds, with an invitation to any one to come forward and prove his death, or give other information respecting him under inducement of the same reward.

Now though Cracknel Cauldfield is a queer name, and one would think that there could be but one such person in the world, yet the advertisement had not been four-and-twenty hours in the paper before three parties of that name sprung up, one writing from Shepton Mallet, another from Great Marlow, and a third (who proved to be the son of the right Cracknel), from Cheadle, in Staffordshire, and after a desperate rummage in the garrets, among old trunks, old boxes, old spinning-wheels, old fire-screens, old furniture generally, the much-coveted, but long-neglected parchment was at length found in an old plate-warmer, where, with other documents, it had reposed for many years out of harm’s way from the rats. So just as the case seemed desperate, and our Banker was about to relinquish all his ambitious house-building projects, thereby of course causing an alteration in the name of the horse, by the judicious expenditure in the way of an advertisement, all matters were again put right, and the nearly abandoned purchase completed.