d and crowding the graveyards, could
be kept from crossing the Hudson, though they were great travelers and
it was well to be prepared for the worst; that we one and all might
providentially escape chills, headaches, coated tongue, pains in the
back, loss of sleep and that tired feeling, but it was almost too much
to ask, even of such a generous climate. In any event, he begged us to
beware of worthless nostrums and base imitations. It made him sad to
think that to-day we were here and that to-morrow we were running up an
undertaker's bill, all for the lack of a small bottle of Medicine's
greatest gift to Man.

I could see that this speech made a lot of women in the crowd powerful
uneasy, and I heard the Widow Judkins say that she was afraid it was
going to be "a mighty sickly winter," and she didn't know as it would do
any harm to have some of that stuff in the house. But the Doctor didn't
offer the Priceless Boon for sale again. He went right from his speech
into an imitation of a dog, with a tin can tied to his tail, running
down Main Street and crawling under Si Hooper's store at the far end of
it--an imitation, he told us, to which the Sultan was powerful partial,
"him being a cruel man and delighting in torturing the poor dumb beasts
which the Lord has given us to love, honor and cherish."

He kept this sort of thing up till he judged it was our bedtime, and
then he thanked us "one and all for our kind attention," and said that
as his mission in life was to amuse as well as to heal, he would stay
over till the next afternoon and give a special matinee for the little
ones, whom he loved for the sake of his own golden-haired Willie, back
there over the Rhine.

Naturally, all the women and children turned out the next afternoon,
though the men had to be at work in the fields and the stores, and the
Doctor just made us roar for half an hour. Then, while he was singing an
uncommon funny song, Mrs. Brown's Johnny let out a howl.

The Doctor stopped short. "Bring the poor little sufferer here, Madam,
and let me see if I can soothe his agony," says he.

Mrs. Brown was a good deal embarrassed and more scared, but she pushed
Johnny, yelling all the time, up to the Doctor, who began tapping him on
the back and looking down his throat. Naturally, this made Johnny cry
all the harder, and his mother was beginning to explain that she
"reckoned she must have stepped on his sore toe," when the Doctor struck
his forehead, crie