Fellow seeker, here's an advertisement from the December 19, 1907 edition of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent. I've read it and reread 50 times and I still don't understand it; not one sentence of it.
An image of a puppy, captioned "Ask me about Mitchell." Is Mitchell the puppy? Or is Mitchell the "me" you're supposed to ask the ad's anonymous author about? Is Mitchell he who the ad cryptically calls "The Real Estate and Sandman"? And what the hell does that mean?
Whoever Mitchell is, "he has furnished cottages and rooms for LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING" in all caps. Does he mean he wants to hire housekeepers for his cottages and rooms? Generally the phrase "light housekeeping" is used to mean a maid coming in and dusting your lampshades; if it was intended, as would be more logical, to mean "housekeeping" as in actually living there (you know, keeping house) how does "light" enter into it?
"He will save you money" on what, exactly, and how? And why is there no address, no phone number (yes, there were phones in 1907) and no last name for this enigmatic "Mitchell"? Do I really have to go track down this dog and actually ask him?
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