An _Ersatz_ story going the rounds in Coblenz shows to what straits matters had come, as well as disproving the frequent assertion that the German is always devoid of a sense of humor. A bondholder, well-to-do before the war, runs the yarn, was too honest or too lacking in foresight to invest in something bringing war profits, with the result that along in the third year of hostilities he found himself approaching a penniless state. Having lost the habit of work, and being too old to acquire it again, he soon found himself in a sad predicament. What most irked his comfort-loving soul, however, was the increasing _Ersatz_-ness of the food on which he was forced to subsist. The day came when he could bear it no longer. He resolved to commit suicide. Entering a drug-store, he demanded an absurdly large dose of prussic acid—and paid what under other conditions would have been a heartbreaking price for it. In the dingy little single room to which fortune had reduced him he wrote a letter of farewell to the world, swallowed the entire prescription, and lay down to die. For some time nothing happened. He had always been under the impression that prussic acid did its work quickly. Possibly he had been misinformed. He could wait. He lighted an _Ersatz_ cigarette and settled down to do so. Still nothing befell him. He stretched out on his sagging bed with the patience of despair, fell asleep, and woke up late next morning feeling none the worse for his action.
“Look here,” he cried, bursting in upon the druggist, “what sort of merchant are you? I paid you a fabulous price for a large dose of prussic acid—I am tired of life and want to die—and the stuff has not done me the least harm!”
“_Donner und Blitz!_” gasped the apothecary. “Why didn’t you say so? I would have warned you that you were probably wasting your money. You know everything in the shop now is _Ersatz_, and I have no way of knowing whether _Ersatz_ prussic acid, or any other poison I have in stock, has any such effect on the human system as does the real article.”
The purchaser left with angry words, slamming the door behind him until the _Ersatz_ plate-glass in it crinkled from the impact. He marched into a shop opposite and bought a rope, returned to his room, and hanged himself. But at his first spasm the rope broke. He cast the remnants from him and stormed back into the rope-shop.