Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor: The Best and Worst Personal Ads of All Time

A writer for Match.com offers what could have been a delightful diversion-after all, who doesn't like reading personals, even if they're happily attached? But this little collection doesn't offer what its subtitle promises. There are plenty of amusing and, yes, pathetic personal ads (several of the latter from patheticpersonals.com), but many of them seem to have been chosen primarily for their odd, outdated diction and mid-19th-century sensibility. And collected together, they get a little boring. Highlights: a man hoping for a woman with one leg shorter than the other, ""as only like and like can be enduringly happy""; the 42-year-old ""old maid"" who, in 1892, writes that she wants ""some chap to love me""; the hippie doing time in San Quentin seeking ""chicks that aren't hung up on middle class Amer. type life"" in 1971. But far too many are examples of educated, honorable 1850s gentlemen looking for pleasant, virtuous 1850s ladies. It's interesting to learn that the personal ad has been around for nearly three centuries, but the fact remains that most people read personal ads either because they're looking for a date or because they're curious what people around them-people they might even know!-are looking for at that very moment. And this collection doesn't offer readers either.