House agents, professional men, and other folk of more questionable kind, were all wont to advertise that they could be seen by clients at this or that coffee-house. The famous and impudent Mrs. Mapp, "the bone-setter," drove into town daily from Epsom in her own carriage, and was to be seen (and heard) at the "Grecian." Most of the houses were willing to receive letters in answer to advertisements, and from the nature of the latter must often, it is pretty certain, have been assisting parties to fraud and chicanery of various kind. At some houses, besides those like Lloyd's specially devoted to auction business, sales were held. A black boy was advertised to be sold at Denis's Coffee-house in Finch Lane in 1708. In the middle of the eighteenth century sales were often held at the "Apollo" Coffee-house, just within Temple Bar, and facing Temple Gate. Picture sales were usually held at coffee-houses. The catalogue of one such sale, held at the "Barbadoes" Coffee-house in February, 1689/90, contains a glowing address on the art of painting by Millington, the Auctioneer, written in the style made famous later by George Robins. Says the eloquent Millington: "This incomparable art at the same time informs the Judgment, pleases the Fancy, recreates the Eye, and touches the Soul, entertains the Curious with silent Instruction, by expressing our most noble Passions, and never fails of rewarding its admirers with the greatest Pleasures, so Innocent and Ravishing, that the severest Moralists, the Morosest _Stoicks_ cannot be offended therewith," and so on and so on. Many of the early book sales, too, were held at coffee-houses. The third book auction in England, that of the library of the Rev. William Greenhill, was held on February 18th, 1677/78, "in the House of Ferdinand Stable, Coffee-Seller, at the Sign of the 'Turk's Head,'" in Bread Street. When sales were held elsewhere, catalogues could usually be had at some of the leading coffee-houses. Besides serving as reading, writing and sale rooms, they seem sometimes to have been used as lecture rooms. William Whiston, in his _Memoirs_ written by himself (1749), says: "Mr. Addison, with his friend Sir Richard Steele, brought me upon my banishment from Cambridge, to have many astronomical lectures at Mr. Button's coffee-house, near Covent Garden, to the agreeable entertainment of a great number of persons, and the procuring me and my family some comfortable support under my banishment."