Part 61

“You’d scarcex peckwon of my yage To speakin public on the stage.”

Again there was a surge of mirth, and the lecturer frowned with concern. But he quickly covered whatever misgivings he might have had by bringing forward other “testimonies”: old Miss Smithson whose nervousness had been quite dispelled by two doses of the herbs; Auntie Thomas (colored) whose “misery” had vanished before the wonder-working treatment; and the Widow Carlin, whose boy had been “spittin’ blood like as if he was churchyard doomed,” but hadn’t had a bad coughing spell since taking the panacea. And all this time Dr. Strong sat quiet in his seat, with a face of darkening sternness.

“You have heard your fellow-citizens,” the lecturer took up his theme again, “testify to the efficacy of my methods. And you see on this rostrum with me that grand and good old man, the worthy pastor of so many of you, my dear and honored friend—I feel that I may call him friend, since I have his approval of my humble labors—the Reverend Doctor Huddleston. You see also here, lending the support of his valued presence, the Honorable Silas Harris, whom you have twice honored by sending him to the state legislature. Their presence is the proudest testimonial to my professional character. In Mr. Harris’s fearless and independent journal you have read the sworn evidence of those who have been cured by my Godgiven remedies; evidence which is beyond challenge—”

“I challenge it.”

Dr. Strong, who had been hopefully awaiting some such opening, was on his feet again.

“You have had your say!” cried Professor Gray, menacing him with a shaking hand. “These people don’t want to hear you. They understand your motives. You can’t run this meeting.”

The gesture was a signal. The raw-boned accompanist, whose secondary function was that of bouncer, made a quick advance from the rear, reached for the unsuspicious Health Master—and recoiled from the impact of Mr. Thomas Clyde’s solid shoulder so sharply that only the side wall checked his subsidence.

“Better stay out of harm’s way, my friend,” suggested Clyde amiably.

Immediately the hall was in an uproar. The more timid of the women were making for the exits, when a high, shrill voice, calling for order strenuously, quelled the racket, and a very fat man waddled down the middle aisle, to be greeted by cries of “Here’s the Mayor.” Several excited volunteers explained the situation to him from as many different points of view, while Professor Graham Gray bellowed his appeal from the platform.

“All I want is fair play. They’re trying to break up my meeting.”

“Not at all,” returned Dr. Strong’s calm voice. “I’m more than anxious to have it continue.”

With a happy inspiration, Mr. Clyde jumped up on his bench.

“I move Mayor Allen take the chair!” he shouted. “Professor Gray says that he courts fair investigation. Let’s give it to him, in order.”

A shout of acclaim greeted this suggestion. Bairdstown’s Suffering Womanhood and Bored Manhood was getting more out of a free admission than it had ever had in its life before. Ponderously the obese Mayor hoisted his weight up the steps and shook hands with the reluctant lecturer. He then invited Dr. Strong to come to the platform.

“This is my meeting!” protested the Great Gray Benefactor. “I hired this hall and paid good money for it.”

“You said it was our meeting as much as yours!” roared an insurgent from the crowd, and a chorus of substantiation followed.

“Ten minutes will be all that I want,” announced Dr. Strong as he took a chair next the Mayor.

“That’s fair!” shrilled the Chairman. “On the Professor’s own invitation.” In a tone lowered to the alarmed quack’s ear, he added: “Of course, you can back out if you want to. But I’d advise you to do it quick if you’re going to do it at all. This is a queer-tempered town.”

So significant was his tone that the other judged advance to be safer than retreat. Therefore, summoning all his assurance, he sought, in an impassioned speech, to win back his hearers. He was a natural orator, and, when he reached his peroration, he had a large part of his audience with him again. In the flush of renewed confidence he made a grave tactical error, just when he should have closed.

“Let this hireling of the Doctors’ Trust, the trust that would strangle all honest competition, answer these if he can!” he shouted, shaking the page of testimonials before his adversary’s face. “Let him confute the evidence of these good and honorable women who have appeared here to-night; women who have no selfish aims to subserve. Let him impugn the motives of the reverend clergyman and of the honored statesman who sit here with me. Let him do this, or let him shrink from this hall in the shame and dishonor which he seeks to heap upon one whose sole ambition it is to relieve suffering and banish pain and death.”

There was hearty applause as the speaker sat down and Dr. Strong arose to face a gathering now turned for the most part hostile. He wasted no time in introduction or argument. “Mr. Chairman,” said he, “Professor Gray rests his case on his testimonials. With Mr. Clyde I have investigated a number of them, and will give you my results. Here are half a dozen testimonials to the value of one of his nostrums, the Benefaction Pills, from women who have been cured, so they state, of diseases ranging from eczema through indigestion to consumption. All, please note, by the same wonderful medicine. And here,” he drew a small box from his pocket, “is a sample of the medicine. I have just had it analyzed. What do you suppose they are? Sugar! Just plain sugar and nothing else.” Professor Gray leaped to his feet. “You don’t deny the cures!” he thundered.

“I don’t deny that these people are well to-day. And I don’t deny that the testimonials from them are genuine, as documents. But your sugar pills had no more to do with the cure than so much moonshine. Listen, you people! Here is the core and secret of quackery:

“All diseases tend to cure themselves, through the natural resistance of the body. But for that we should all be dead. This man, or some other of his kind, comes along with his promises and pills, and when the patient recovers from the disease in the natural course of events, he claims the credit. Meantime, he is selling sugar at about one hundred dollars per pound.”

“Sugar,” said the quack, quick-wittedly. “But what kind of sugar? This sugar, as he calls it, is crystal precipitated from the extract of these healing herbs. No chemist can determine its properties by any analysis.”

“Very well turned,” said Dr. Strong, with a smile. “I can’t immediately disprove that, though I could with time. But, whatever the case with his sugar, any chemist can analyze this.” He held up a small bottle, half filled with a red-brown liquid. “This is the Extract of Gospel Herbs. Now, let us see what this does.”

He referred to his copy of the “Bugle,” containing the testimonials. “Here is Mrs. Sarah Jenkins, of the neighboring town of Maresco, where Professor Gray lectured a year ago, cured of Bright’s disease and dropsy; Miss Allie Wheat, of Weedsport, cured of cancer of the stomach; and Mrs. Howard Cleary, of Roxton, wholly relieved of nervous breakdown and insomnia. All genuine testimonials. Mr. Clyde and I have traced them.”

Professor Gray raised his head with a flash of triumph. “You see!” he cried. “He has to admit the genuineness of my testimonials!”

“Of your testimonials; yes. But what about your cures? Mrs. Jenkins has, as she said, ceased to suffer from her ills. She died of Bright’s disease and dropsy three months after Professor Gray cured her of them. Miss Wheat, whose cancer was purely imaginary, is now a hopeless wreck, in a sanitarium whither the Gospel Herbs drove her. Mrs. Cleary—but let me read what she testified to. Here it is in the paper with a picture of the Cleary home:—”