Wanted—The address of some one who can tattoo with Indian ink on the person. A.J.H., No. —, —th Street.

This advertisement appeared in a St. Louis Sunday morning paper. The number and the street are not given for reasons that will at once present themselves to every intelligent reader. Now there is sometimes that in an advertisement which attracts one like a pretty girl. A few lines may furnish a neat little intellectual flirtation, and very frequently can, like a coy and pretty maiden, keep coaxing a fellow along until he is perfectly lost in the maze of an affection that he has neither the tact nor the willingness to try to escape from. As soon as my eyes lit upon them and the words from the capital W in the beginning to the period at the end were taken in, I was irrevocably gone on them. Like the immortal J.N., I immediately lifted the veil and looked at the suppositious sanctuary behind it, and then saw that walking art gallery, Capt. Costentenus—known to thousands of people who saw him travelling as the tattooed man—lying bound hand and foot upon the earth and surrounded by half a dozen Chinese Tartars, who were industriously pricking him with pointed instruments, which were ever and anon dipped into the little basins of blackish-blue liquid. The scene changed suddenly into a room at No. —, —th Street, and the Tartars were metamorphosed into a single individual of a decidedly Caucasian aspect, but with features wrought in that indistinctness which very frequently is characteristic of the shapes and forms seen in waking dreams, and the Greek Captain was replaced by an equally Caucasian subject, who was quietly undergoing the operations of having his breast tattooed in the most lavish and picturesque manner that the artist knew how. This idea fastened itself in my mind to such an extraordinary extent that merely for the purpose of gratifying a certain instinctive curiosity, as well as to see if my suppositions were correct, I called at the house indicated next afternoon.

It was a large three-story boarding-house in a very quiet part of the city, and situated romantically enough to lend the coloring of fact to the picture I had previously conjured up of the surroundings of the gentleman who wanted to be tattooed.

A young girl opened the door, who knew nothing of the person who owned the initials that appeared in the advertisement. I explained that this was the number and street—it was certainly the right house—and couldn't she recollect some name that began with an H. No, she could not. She did not think there was any gentleman boarding in the house whose name began with an H, and then she recollected that there had come to the house a few days before a man whose name she did not know. She would call her mother. "Ma! oh, ma!" rang down through the hallway, and around behind the staircase, and down into the dining-room, and up came the assuring response, "I'll be there in a minute." Enter the landlady with a wet towel on her head, and wiping her fingers on the corner of her apron. In answer to the daughter's query as to what the "new gentleman's" name was, she replied, as if she had known him since the corner-stone of Cheops was laid, that he was Mr. Henneberry. Was he in? No, not just then, but he would be back in time for dinner, which would be spread in about half an hour. Somewhat disappointed I replied that I would take a walk around and call at the end of the half hour, and was about to leave the door when a voice was heard on the upper landing, and the words "Hold on!" shouted in a very peremptory manner brought me to a halt. It was Mr. Henneberry, as I soon ascertained, when a tall, stout, well-proportioned gentleman, of handsome features and the prettiest black hair my eyes ever gazed upon, came down, introduced himself, and invited me in. The object of the visit was explained in a few words.

"Well," said Mr. Henneberry, "I've been just talking to a gentleman up in my room, an old sailor, who was crippled some years ago, by falling from the spar of a South American sailer, so he says, and who appears to be pretty expert. I rather like the man, and I think he will about suit me. He needs money, what you don't appear to do, and I think he is just the very man for what I want. So you see, I think you're a little late."

I expressed my regret at not having seen the advertisement earlier.

"You see," continued Mr. Henneberry, "I want somebody who will stay in the house here, and be available at all times during the day. It's a pretty long job—" and here he checked himself. "No, I don't mean a long job, because there ain't much of it, but what there is has got to be done neat and right up to the handle. What sort of work can you do?"

I bared my arm and exhibited a large death-head and cross-bones, an American eagle, and a bust of George Washington, which I had tattooed into me, when young and fond and foolish, by a Greek sailor I met in Milwaukee. "That's pretty good," said Henneberry. "Where did you learn the business—if I might call it a business?"

Here I explained that an old sail-maker had taught me the art and that, having acquired the modus operandi of pricking the color into the flesh, I was perfectly at home in the business, as I was also an experienced sketcher.

Further talk followed, in which Mr. Henneberry spoke of tattooing generally, but made no allusion to the person to be tattooed nor the extent of the work to be done. At last, as he rose from his chair, as a gentle reminder that he had said about all he wanted to say, remarked that I might call again, as he had yet made no definite arrangement with the man up-stairs and probably would need two.

I went off chagrined, and wished that the old salt with the broken leg, who had gotten in ahead of me had broken his neck when he fell from the spar of that South American sailer. I left the door whistling, "We Parted by the River Side."

A saunter into a shady spot at a safe distance from the house, and a mind made up to await the outcoming of the successful rival, were the results of a sudden inspiration. An hour passed, a half more, three quarters, and it was just about an even couple of hours when out from the door of No. —, —th Street, limped a middle-aged, bent man, and he came directly towards me. He passed me by, for about half a block, when I caught up, and introduced the opening wedge of conversation by remarking that the weather was a little cooler than folks around there had been used to for the past month or so.

"Well, yes," was the reply, "but I don't mind it so much. You see I've hove to in hotter ports than this'll ever be. That sunstroke period was Injun summer compared with the brimstun climate I've pulled through. I've been along the African coast when it was hot enough to make a mill-stun sweat. If they could have just shipped that weather North it would thaw the North Pole into hot water inside of fifteen minutes."

And then the crippled sailor told of other experiences in other warm climates, and we talked on in an easy, friendly way for three or four blocks, when my companion remarked that he was going to take the cars. I said I was going to do the same, and as soon as we were seated on the shady side of the conveyance I remarked in a careless, off-hand way:—

"You got ahead of me in that job down at Henneberry's, old man."

He opened his eyes, looked at me half suspiciously, and said: "Then you're the young man the gentleman was talking about to me. You went to see him, this afternoon?"

An affirmative was the answer.

"Well, you needn't be so put out. He ain't engaged nobody yet. At least he ain't closed with me. You see, he's a bit scary. Didn't he tell you what he wanted?"

"Yes. At least, he left me to infer that he wanted either himself or somebody else tattooed."

"All over?"

"I thought that was what he meant."

"Well, blast his jib! He made me make all sorts o' promises not to open my port-hole about it."

"It is a very funny project, isn't it?" asked the reporter.

"Oh, no, not at all. I've been at it afore. I worked at a man up in Canada for about three months and got him nigh half done, when he died." "It's a pretty dangerous operation, this tattooing?" was the next gentle insinuation.

"Yes, sometimes. But Henneberry can stand it. He looks as if he had the constitution and he appears to be reckless of the consequences. He wants to be a show-fellow. He's struck on it, just the same as that Canada chap who kicked. He's got an idea that there's money in it, and he's always talkin' about that Grecian chap as is with the circuses, you know."

"How long will it take to do the job?"

"Well, that I don't exactly know. He talks of havin' two of us at it. Maybe you're the other fellow, and he's in a stormy hurry about havin' it finished up, and wants a fellow to stay in the house with him all the time so that he can take his tattooing just when he feels like it. Are you good in drawin' dragoons, flyin' fish, elephants, boey constrictors and sich, young man?"

I replied that I was an adept in delineating animals of the sort named.

"Then I guess he'll want you. I used to be a pretty good drawer myself afore I fell from that South American, but my hand shakes no little now; but you just lay the lines, and if I don't stick 'em in as clean as a copper plate, my name ain't Jack Hogan."

"What will he pay for the job?"

"Well, I asked $600 calc'latin' six months would do it, but he brought me down to $450 and will pay my board and lodgin'. That ain't bad."

The reporter coincided with Jack Hogan that it appeared to be a pretty good thing.

"And you don't git your money down either. He wants to be fixed up from the soles of his feet to near his shirt collar and wristbands, in the house where he is now, and then he's goin' off to some quiet spot and have his face and hands and even his ears and the top of his head, for he's partly bald, done up in some place in the country, or may be out in some of the Pacific islands, and if it's a bargain between us I'll have to go with him."

"What catches me," said I, as we got up to leave the car, "is what Henneberry will do with himself when the finishing touches are all put on him."

"I can't say, but I s'pose he'll go off to the Sandwich Islands, marry a nigger squaw, or something of that sort, and come back with a cock-and-bull story about being captured by savages, and then swing 'round the circle with some circus or other. He's got the money to push the thing through, and I believe he can stand it. Maybe he'll travel with old Cos'tenus, and they'll call themselves the tattooed twins."

And the old fellow laughed heartily as he got down carefully from the platform of the car, and limped away towards the river—perhaps down to the Bethel Home on the levee.

The foregoing story may be regarded as quite a valuable clue when associated with a piece of information furnished by an Albany, New York, journal, whose reporter says the work on Capt. Costentenus's body pales when compared with that shown by a young man who stopped over in Albany one evening last summer on his way from Saratoga to his home in Syracuse. His name is Henry Frumell, and he is but twenty-three years of age. Although so young, he has, according to his own story, seen considerable of life. In 1876 he ran away from home, shipped on a merchant vessel which was trading among the Washington Islands in South Pacific. While there he underwent the tattooing process, which he described as the most painful torture ever endured. "How was it done, and by whom?" he was asked by a reporter.

"By the natives, and with six needles fastened to a stick. Do you see them (showing the backs of his hands and wrists)? There is a lady's face on one and a man's on the other. Vermilion red and indigo blue were used, being pricked in with the needles. Now you see that the work is executed just as neatly and perfectly as it could possibly be on the human skin. Well, it took weeks before the design was finished, and it had to be pricked over a number of times."

"It must have been painful."

"It was. But then I had no choice but to submit."

"Why, were you compelled to undergo the tattooing?"

"Hardly that, but it was wiser to do so."

"How could natives execute the work so perfectly?"

"They used designs given them by a sailor named John Wells, who belonged to an English vessel. Those on my wrist are not so perfect as on other portions of my body."

"Did they tattoo you all over?"

"All except a small portion of the left leg above the ankle."

The designs so ineffaceably worked into Frumell's skin are numerous and beautiful, and some of them so appropriate to the young man's nationality that it is difficult to imagine how a South Pacific savage, even with an English sailor for an advisor, should have selected such fitting pictures. On his back, extending from shoulder to shoulder, and from the nape of the neck downward was a spirited illustration of two ships in action. Below it is a snake with protruding fangs and a scroll with Paul Jones's motto, "Don't tread on me." On his breast is the national coat of arms worked on the breast of an American eagle with pinions outspread, and the national colors in its beak. This covers the entire breast from armpit to armpit, and from the throat downward. Both arms are literally covered with designs of beasts, birds, and flowers. The lower limbs are also ornamented, one with the "Crucifixion of Christ" and the other with the shamrock, harp of Erin, and other designs. Each kneecap looks like a full-blown rose, with its vivid coloring and almost perfect imitation of that flower. The remainder of his body is similarly decorated, over five months being occupied in the process, and considerable more time being occupied in healing. His skin has the feeling of the finest velvet, and he says that he does not experience any evil effects from the immense quantity of poisonous dye injected into the cuticle. He has tried to eradicate the designs on his hands by burning, but without avail.