ing he decided on was the name,
and he had to do that in a hurry to get his advertising placed.
Hawkins' Bitters was familiar to ten million people before a bottle of
it had been made. It was only last summer that Hawkins sold out his
business for a cool two million and went to Europe."

"His decoction is terrible stuff," commented the doctor, more in
sorrow than in anger; "but it certainly has a remarkable sale."

"I should say it has!" agreed Wallingford. "The drug-stores sell it to
temperance people by the case, and in the dry states you'll find every
back yard littered with empty Hawkins' Bitters bottles."

A half-dozen entertaining stories of the kind Wallingford told
his guest, and by the time he was through Doctor Lazzier began
himself to have large visions of enormous profits to be made in the
patent medicine business. Somehow, the very waistcoat of young J.
Rufus seemed, in its breadth and gorgeousness, a guarantee of enormous
profits, no matter what business he discussed. But the doctor's very
last remark was upon the sacredness of medical ethics! When he was
gone there was a conspicuous silence between Wallingford and his wife
for a few minutes, and then she asked:

"Jim, are you actually going to start a patent medicine company?"

"Certainly I am," he replied.

"And will Doctor Lazzier take stock in it?"

"He certainly will," he assured her. "I figure him for from ten to
twenty-five thousand."

CHAPTER XXV

IN WHICH WALLINGFORD ORGANIZES THE DOCTOR
QUAGG PEERLESS SCIATACATA COMPANY

At the Benson House J. Rufus found Doctor Quagg with a leg propped up
on a chair, and himself in a state of profound profanity.

"What's the matter, Doc?" asked Wallingford.

"Sciatic rheumatism!" howled the martyr. "It's gettin' worse every
year. Every time I go on the street for a night I know I'm goin' to
suffer. That's why I keep it up so late and spiel myself hoarse in the
neck. I jumped into town just yesterday and got a reader from these
city hall pirates. They charged me twenty-five iron men for my license
for the week. I go out and make one pitch, and that's all I get for my
twenty-five."

"Sciatic rheumatism's a tough dose," commiserated Wallingford. "Why
don't you take five or six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata?"

The answer to this was a storm of fervid expletives which needed no
diagram. Wallingford, chuckling, sat down and gloated over the
doctor's misery, lighting a big, fat cigar to