Pecks Compendium of Fun | Page 7

what it was, and I took down everything in the store pretty
near before I found it, and then I wouldn't have found it only the
proprietor came in. The girl asked the proprietor if there wasn't a good
deal of sewer gas in the store, and he told me to go out and shake
myself. I think the girl was mad at me because I got a nursing bottle out
of the show case with a rubber muzzle, and asked her if that was what
she wanted. Well, she told me a sachet was something for the stummick,
and I thought a nursing bottle was the nearest thing to it."

[Illustration: NEW WAY OF TAKING SEIDLITZ POWDERS]
"I should think you would drive all the customers away from the store,"
said the groceryman as he opened the door to let the fresh air in.
"I don't know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I shall
stay. You see, I sha'n't practice on anybody but Pa for a spell. I made up
my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of powdered
borax, and she came back mad. Pa seems to want to encourage me, and
is willing to take anything that I ask him to. He had a sore throat and
wanted something for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some
tannin and chlorate of potash in a mortar and grind it, and I let Pa
pound it with the mortar, and while he was pounding I dropped in a
couple of drops of sulphuric acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa's hat
clear across the store, and Pa was whiter than a sheet. He said he
guessed his throat was all right, and he wouldn't come near me again
that day. The next day Pa came in, and I was laying for him. I took a
white seidletz powder and a blue one, and dissolved them in separate
glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he didn't want some
lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one and he drank
it. He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other glass that
looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he drank it.
Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa's stummick, and
began to siz and steam and foam, Pa pretty near choked to death, and
the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and as soon as
he could get his breath he yelled 'fire,' and said he was poisoned, and
called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a doctor right in the
family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a stomach pump and
would have baled him out in no time, only the proprietor came in and
told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of brandy,
and Pa said he felt better. Pa has learned where we keep the liquor, and
he comes in two or three times a day with a pain in his stomach. They
play awful mean tricks on a boy in a drug store. The first day they put a
chunk of something blue into a mortar, and told me to pulverize it and
then make it up into two grain pills. Well, sir, I pounded that chunk all
the forenoon, and it never pulverized at all, and the boss told me to
hurry up as the woman was waiting for the pills, and I mauled it till I

was nearly dead, and when it was time to go to supper the boss came
and looked in the mortar, and took out the chunk and said, 'You dum
fool, you have been pounding all day on a chunk of India rubber,
instead of blue mass!' Well, how did I know? But I will get even with
them if I stay there long enough, and don't you forget it. If you have a
prescription you want filled you can come down to the store and I will
put it up for you myself, and then you will be sure to get what you pay
for."
"Yes," said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of limberg cheese and
put it on the stove to purify the air in the room, "I should laugh to see
myself taking any medicine you put up. You will kill some one yet, by
giving them poison instead of quinine. But what has your Pa got his
nose tied up for? He looks as though he had had a fight."
"O, that was from my