Part 63

From the main floor came a hoarse suggestion which had the words “tar and feathers” in it. It was cut short by a metallic shriek from without, followed by a heavy rumbling.

“Something seems to tell me,” said the fat Mayor solemnly, “that the 9.30 express, which just whistled for the crossing, is the heavier by about two hundred pounds of Great Gray Benefactor clinging to the rear platform, and happy to be there.”

“And your money back if not benefited,” piped a reedy voice from the front, whereupon there was another roar.

“The bright particular star of these proceedings having left, is there anything else to come before the meeting?” inquired the chairman.

“I’d like to have one more word,” said Dr. Strong. “Friends, as one quack is, all quacks are. They differ only in method and degree. Every one of them plays a game with stacked cards, in which you are his victims, and Death is his partner. And the puller-in for this game is the press.

“You have heard to-night how a good and wellmeaning clergyman has been made stool-pigeon for this murderous charlatan, through the lying of a religious—God save the mark!—weekly. That publication is beyond our reach. But there is one here at home which did the quack’s work for him, and took his money for doing it. I suggest that the Honorable Silas Harris explain!”

“I’m running my paper as a business proposition,” growled the baited editor and owner of the ‘Bugle,’ “and I’m running it to suit myself and this community.”

“You’re running it to suit the crooked and cruel advertisers who prey on this community,” retorted the other. “And you’ve served them further in the legislature, where you voted to kill the patent-medicine bill, last session, in protection of your own profits. Good profits, too. One third of all your advertising is medical quackery which takes good money out of this town by sheer swindling; money which ought to stay in town and be spent on the legitimate local products advertised in your paper. If I were a local advertiser, I’d want to know why.”

“If that’s the case,” remarked Mr. Stanley Gryce, quick to catch the point, “I guess you owe my family seven dollars an’ a half, Silas, and till it’s paid up you can just drop my laundry announcement out of your columns.”

“I guess I’ll stay out for a spell, too,” supplemented Mr. Corson, the hay and feed man. “For a week, my ad’s been swamped by Swamp Root so deep you can’t see it.”

“While you’re about it,” added a third, “leave me out. I’m kinder sick of appearin’ between a poisonous headache powder and a consumption dope. Folks’ll be accusin’ me of seekin’ trade untimely.” This was greeted with a whoop, for the speaker was the local undertaker.

“We’ve got a league for Clean Advertising in Worthington,” announced Mr. Clyde. “Why not organize something of the kind here?”

“Help!” shouted the Honorable Silas, throwing up his hands. “Don’t shoot! I holler ‘Enough!’ As soon as the contracts are out, I’ll quit. There’s no money in patent-medicine advertising any more for the small paper, anyway.”

“Well, we’ve done our evening’s chores, I reckon,” remarked the chairman. “A motion to adjourn will now be in order.”

“Move we adjourn with the chorus of the ‘Hymn of Healing,’” piped the wag with the reedy voice, and the audience filed out, uproariously and profanely singing:—

“Ye shall be healed! Ye shall be healed! Trust in the gospel advice. Cured by the herbs of the wood and the field; Healed without money or price.”

“Well, young man,” said Grandma Sharpless, coming forward to join the Health Master, “you certainly carried out your programme.”

“I?” said Dr. Strong, affectionately tucking the old lady’s arm under his. “To you the honors of war. I only squelched a quack. You taught Bairds-town’s self-coddling womanhood a lesson that will go down the generations.”

“What I want to know,” said the Mayor, advancing to shake hands with Mrs. Sharpless, “is this: what’s a fussybuddy?”

“A fussybuddy,” instructed Grandma Sharpless wisely, “is a woman who catches a stomach-ache from a patent-medicine almanac. What I want to know, Tom Allen, is what you had against the man. I seemed to get an inkling that you didn’t exactly like him.”

“He’s forgotten me,” chuckled the Mayor, “but I haven’t forgotten him. Fifteen years ago he came along here horse-doctoring and poisoned a perfectly good mare for me. He won’t try to poison this town again in a hurry. You finished him, Mrs. Sharpless, you and Dr. Strong.”

“What I want to know,” said the Health Master, “is how poor old Mr. Huddleston feels about that contribution, now.”

A month later he found out. Traveling by trolley one evening, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to face Professor Graham Gray.

“No hard feelings, I hope,” said the quack with superb urbanity. “All in the way of business, I take it. I’d have done the same to you, if you’d come butting in on my trade. Say, but that old lady was a Tartar! She cooked my goose in Bairdstown. For all that, I got an unsolicited testimonial from there two weeks ago that’s a wonder. Anonymous, too. Not a word of writing with it to tell who the grateful patient might be.”

“What was it?” asked Dr. Strong with polite interest.

“A twenty-dollar bill. Now, what do you think of that?”

When Dr. Strong spoke again—and the Great Gray Benefactor has always regarded this as the most inconsequential reply he ever received to a plain question—it was after a long and thoughtful pause.

“I think,” said he with conviction, “that I’ll start in going to church again, next Sunday.”