"O!" with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic "O!" I never can forget or describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles, without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they came. The boy's idea was summed up as follows:--
"The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I run home."
"_Taking it out in trade_" is all very well when the arrangement is mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at least to one party, as thus:--
"What's the matter, Jerry?" asked old Mr. ----, as Jeremiah was jogging by, growling most furiously.
"Matter 'nough," replied old Jerry. "There I've been luggin' water all the morning for the doctor's wife to wash with, and what do you s'pose she give me for it?"
"Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some time, when he got leisure."
Apothecaries sometimes "come down" from the dignity of the professional man, and crack a joke. For instance,--
A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."
In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries' shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores, and asked the keeper,--
"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.
The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,--
_A sure Cure._--Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and _encouraging_.
"Gravel," wrote the doctor, "gravel is an effectual cure. It should be taken about four feet deep."
The "remedy" was not, however, so remarkable as the following:--
"_Time and Cure._"--A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, "Guilty." The magistrate was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what had induced him to take the watch.