AN ENIGMATIC ADVERTISEMENT.

In a magazine from 1911, we found this advertisement among the usual promotions for correspondence schools and manuals of sexual relations from a physiological standpoint.

This young lady is going boating. Before leaving she sent for a bound volume of “The Caldron,” the magazine of disdelusion. All wise people take this little magazine with them when they go on an outing.

To approach an outing in a disdeluded state sounds like a reasonable precaution. But under what delusions might we suppose this young lady would otherwise be laboring? The delusion that the weather will always be fair? The delusion that she will not have to walk home when her gentleman friend rows her out to the middle of the lake? The delusion that her posture is natural? Dr. Boli thought it would be entertaining to read a few numbers of this magazine and become disdeluded, but it was not to be found in the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, or Google Books. Perhaps that is how the disdelusion is accomplished. You send your dollar for a year’s worth of the Caldron, and no magazine ever appears through your mail slot, and you are cured of the delusion that advertisers in the backs of magazines are fundamentally honest.