"Not one in a thousand of these letters ever reaches the eyes of the 'doctor' to whom they are addressed. There wouldn't be hours enough in the day to read them even if he had the desire. On the contrary, these letters from women of a private and delicate nature are opened and read by young men and girls; they go through not fewer than eight different hands before they reach a reply; each in turn reads them, and if there is anything 'spicy' you will see the heads of two or three girls get together and enjoy (!) the 'spice.' Very often these 'spicy bits' are taken home and shown to the friends and families of these girls and men! Time and again have I seen this done; time and again have I been handed over a letter by one of the young fellows with the remark: 'Read this, isn't that rich?' only to read of the recital of some trouble into which a young girl has fallen, or some mother's sacred story of her daughter's all! "Then, to cap the climax of iniquity, with some of these houses these names and addresses are sold at two, three or five cents a name to firms in other lines of business for the purpose of sending circulars. As a fact, often the trouble is not taken to copy off the names and addresses, but the letters themselves, with all their private contents, are sold! "This is the true story of the 'sacredly confidential' way in which these private letters from women are treated!"--Statement of a man who spent two years in the employ of a large patent medicine concern, as told in "How the Private Confidences of Women Are Laughed At." Edward Bok, _Ladies' Home Journal,_ November, 1904. End of Project Gutenberg's The Great American Fraud, by Samuel Hopkins Adams