This article has been transcribed from a copy of the Cardiff Times in the online collection of scanned Welsh newspapers 1804-1919 in the National Library of Wales, with grateful recognition of the free access accorded to all readers. Paragraph breaks have been introduced for easier reading.
The cost of living and a shortage of ready money are regular topics in 'Samuels' Sentiments'. Advertising aimed at increasing consumer desire to buy products has been growing since the mid-century. Scandals about defective military equipment are frequently heard at this time. —— David Skilton
Wanted: a husband. Apply at once.
h, those 'long-felt['] wants, my dear sir, how they do come, not as single spies, but in battalions [Hamlet IV.v.76-7]. And the worst of it is that so many people insist upon pointing out to us what are our long-felt wants, when all the time we know perfectly well what they are without any tantalising reminders. There is not one amongst us that does not suffer from some long-felt want – or fancies that he does, and fancy goes a long way in these matters. And these long-felt wants (I wonder who invented so dubiously gramatical a term) are for ever staring one in the face. I often take up a daily newspaper, we will say – for it is one of the iniquities I am guilty of; I take it up, and there staring me in the face on nearly every column is the remainder of one or other of these long-felt wants. I read a column of interesting matter dealing with some subject that has been a life-long study to me, and immediately my eye runs off this article upon the one immediately beneath where there is a 'Long-felt Want' in small but sufficiently striking letters boldly confronting me, and, impelled by some fascination I can scarcely account for. I read on and find that unless I, and the rest of mankind of course, use 'Latherum soap' exclusively, I shall go down to an early grave with a skin like a crocodile. I find, too, that in the matter of my liver, and my brain power, and my teeth and gums, never to speak of the shape (and probably colour) of my nose,I am neglecting many long-felt wants which disinterested philanthropists are pointing out to me, and the same rule obtains even in the news columns themselves, for frothy speakers and turgid leader-writer (surely the dullest of all earthly scribes) are for ever reminding me that socially or politically I am the victim of some sort of want. Go where I will it is the same; should I emerge into the street, there is the long-felt want staring me in the face on every hoarding; in my favourite hotel every wall has some record of my urgent need in divers directions; in the railway carriage, in the omnibus it is the same, and should I stroll out countrywards even I am sure to meet with a blank wall somewhere, where my parlous state in the way of wants is plainly and warningly indicated to me. In large towns, if I shy at receiving the bills showing my 'wantingness' (if I may use the term) which very dilapidated men attempt to hand to me, these same men seem to regard me as the particular victim of the special long-felt want which their particular employers supply, for they literally shove their bills under my own, and altogether I begin to feel like a man who in his Iife has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Perhaps even that is better than being 'wanted' – by the 'pollis.'
A long-felt want – coin!
What a lot of long-felt wants poor humanity does suffer from, irrespective of those doubtful ones I have pointed out. Perhaps the most common of all of them is that all-pervading one — the want of coin, for few of us think that we have enough of that, and most of us are jolly well certain that we have not. That want is, indeed, in the truest sense, a 'long'-felt one, for almost from the cradle to the grave few of us are content with what we actually have, and, like Oliver, are perpetually crying for more [Dickens, Oliver Twist]. But apart from this almost universal want — what price a pair of tongs that will actually lift a lump of co[a]l without allowing it to be dropped with a bang either upon the carpet or into the fancy grate? What price anything in this way that will ever effectually supersede fingers? What price a patent cigarette maker that doesn’t get out of order or waste more time than you’d waste money in buying the 'cigs.' ready-made? What price one of those that can beat fingers? Talk about long-felt want, why how long have we all felt the want of a watch-repairer who didn’t say when one's watch has been slightly out of repair for a day or two that it required a new main-spring, which would be seven-and-sixpence or some similar sum? Long-felt want, indeed; How about a servant-girl who wasn't always afflicted with a hideously swollen face when one had company; how about one of the same class who could never clean boots unless she left the 'top dirt' on and put the blacking over it, deposit after deposit; how about a stamp distributor at a Post-office who could ever be decently civil: how about a chambermaid who would refrain from saying after you had rung for her till you were nearly black in the face through rage and exertion, 'did you ring, sir?' how about a dress-maker who, when you ladies had ordered a dress for a particular occasion, ever sent the article right up to time; why, this world is literally crammed With long-felt wants.
Dinner – a long felt want
There are long-felt wants in connection with every profession one can think of. Just let us catalogue a few of them: WANTED: BADLY AND IMMEDIATELY Big guns that will go off without bursting; rifles that will go off at all after a few rounds have been fired; bayonets that do not bend about as though they were made of tin; a commander or two who has not some sort of a 'fad' (temperance or otherwise) about which he does not lecture before Young Men's Goody-Goody Associations. WANTED also, a few manageable ironclads fitted with engines that do not break down immediately upon being set in motion; also a few commanders who know how to avoid running each other (in more senses than one) down; also a number of torpedo boats that are not veritable hells upon earth. WANTED, also, a few eminent barristers who actually undertake the cases for which they are fee'd to appear; a clergyman or two who entertains feelings of charity towards those of the same denomination who happen to disagree[d] with him. WANTED —Oh, bother! there is no end to these long-felt wants.
Links to Related Material
Last modified 26 March 2022