heir careful
experiments.

I have come about to the end of my tether for this time; and quackery is
something too monstrous in dimensions as well as character to be dealt
with in a paragraph. But I may with propriety put one quack at the tail
of this letter; it is but just that he should let decent people go
before him. I mean "Old Sands of Life." Everybody has seen his
advertisement, beginning "A retired Physician whose sands of life have
nearly run out," etc. And everybody--almost--knows how kind the fellow
is in sending gratis his recipe. All that is necessary is (as you find
out when you get the recipe) to buy at a high price from him one
ingredient which (he says) you can get nowhere else. This swindling
scamp is in fact a smart brisk fellow of about thirty-five years of age,
notwithstanding the length of time during which--to use a funny phrase
which somebody got up for him--he has been "afflicted with a loose
tail-board to his mortal sand-cart." Some benevolent friend was so much
distressed about the feebleness of "Old Sands of Life" as to send him
one day a large parcel by express, marked "C. O. D.," and costing quite
a figure. "Old Sands" paid, and opening the parcel, found half a bushel
of excellent sand.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE CONSUMPTIVE REMEDY.--E. ANDREWS, M. D.--BORN WITHOUT
BIRTHRIGHTS.--HASHEESH CANDY.--ROBACK THE GREAT.--A CONJURER OPPOSED TO
LYING.

There is a fellow in Williamsburg who calls himself a clergyman, and
sells a "consumptive remedy," by which I suppose he means a remedy for
consumption. It is a mere slop corked in a vial; but there are a good
many people who are silly enough to buy it of him. A certain gentleman,
during last November, earnestly sought an interview with this reverend
brother in the interests of humanity, but he was as inaccessible as a
chipmunk in a stone fence. The gentleman wrote a polite note to the
knave asking about prices, and received a printed circular in return,
stating in an affecting manner the good man's grief at having to raise
his price in consequence of the cost of gold "with which I am obliged to
buy my medicines" saith he, "in Paris." This was both sad and
unsatisfactory; and the gentleman went over to Williamsburg to seek an
interview and find out all about the prices. He reached the abode of the
man of piety, but, strange to relate, he wasn't at home.

Gentleman waited.

Reverend brother kept on not being at home. When gentleman had waited t