"Astor" I had read by contrary. It meant "Girard," I thought,--Girard
Bank. "Independence Hall" I construed as signifying a place of meeting
in front of that building; and "Rudolph"--for this was the point--was a
notorious bank robber, on whose track I wished to get, by the name of
Ralph Seeker, among his "aliases," but Ralph was his real
name--"Rudolph" being the German for the same; and doubtless I was
right in my translation; but as nothing came of that, as I have said
before, I here leave "peculiar advertisements" in general, to the
unravelling of the curious. But it is a science of itself, which, in
its subtleties, sometimes baffles the keenest wits. I am prompted, as I
write, to add hereto, for the pleasure of the curious reader, sundry of
the "blind methods" (in advertisements usually) by which one scoundrel
intimates to another his whereabouts, and what he has accomplished, or
where he would meet another to aid in some crime, etc., under
circumstances which forbid their communicating through the mail or by
telegraph. But I have hardly room in this article, already too long.
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