Off-Hand Sketches, a Little Dashed with Humor
"Will you commence delivering to-day?" inquired the sportsman, who all at once began to manifest a marked degree of interest in the business.
"Yes," replied the farmer.
"How many wagons have you?"
"Two."
"As it is down hill all the way to the canal, they can easily take a hundred bushels each."
"Oh, yes."
"Very well. They can make two loads apiece to-day, and, by starting early, three loads apiece on Monday, which will transfer the whole thousand bushels to the canal. I will go down immediately and see that a boat is ready to commence loading. You can go to work at once."
By extra effort, the wheat was all delivered by Monday afternoon, and the balance of the purchase-money paid. As Mr. Ashburn was riding home, a neighbour who had noticed his wagons going past his house with wheat for the two days, overtook him.
"So I see, friend Ashburn, that, like me, you are content to take the first advance of the market, instead of running the risk of a decline for a further rise in prices. What did you get for your wheat?"
"I sold for ninety cents."
"Ninety cents!" exclaimed the neighbour. "Surely you didn't sell for that?"
"I certainly did. I tried to get ninety-two, but ninety was the highest offer I could obtain."
"Ninety cents! Why, what has come over you, Ashburn. Wheat is selling for a dollar and twenty cents. I've just sold five hundred bushels for that."
"Impossible!" ejaculated the farmer.
"Not at all impossible. Don't you know that by the last arrival from England have come accounts of a bad harvest, and that wheat has taken a sudden rise?"
"No, I don't know any such a thing," returned the astonished Ashburn.
"Well, it's so. Where is your newspaper?—Haven't you read it? I got mine on Friday evening, and saw the news. Early on Saturday morning I found two or three speculators ready to buy up all the wheat they could get at old prices; but they didn't make many operations. One fellow who pretended to be a fancy sportsman, thrust himself into my way, but, even if I had not know of a rise in the price of wheat, I should have suspected it as soon as I saw him, for I read, last week, of just such a looking chap as him having got ahead of some ignorant country farmers by buying up their produce, on a sudden rise of the market, at price much below its real value."
"Good day!" said Ashburn, suddenly applying his whip to the flank of his horse; and away dashed homeward at a full gallop.
The farmer never sat down to make a regular calculation of what he had lost by stopping his news paper; but it required no formality of pencil and paper to arrive at this. A difference of thirty cents on each bushel, made, for a thousand bushels, the important sum of three hundred dollars, and this fact his mind instantly saw.
By the next mail, he enclosed two dollars to the publishers of the "Post," and re-ordered the paper. He will, doubtless, think a good while, and retrench at a good many points, before he orders an other discontinuance.
HUNTING UP A TESTIMONIAL
"DOCTOR," said a man with a thin, sallow countenance, pale lips, and leaden eyes, coming up to the counter of a drug-store in Baltimore, some ten years ago—"Doctor, I've been reading your advertisement about the 'UNIVERSAL RESTORER, AND BALSAM OF LIFE,' and if that Mr. John Johnson's testimony is to be relied on, it ought to suit my case, for, in describing his own sufferings, he has exactly described mine. But I've spent so much money in medicine, to no purpose, that I am tired of being humbugged: so, if you'll just tell me where I can find this Mr. Johnson, I'll give him a call. I'd like to know if he's a real flesh-and-blood man."
"You don't mean to insinuate that I'd forge a testimonial?" replied the man of medicine, with some slight show of indignation.
"Oh, no. I don't insinuate any thing at all, doctor," answered the pale-looking man. "But I'd like to see this Mr. John Johnson, and have a little talk with him."
"You can do that, if you'll take the trouble to call on him," said the doctor, in an off-hand way.
"Where can I find him?" asked the man.
"He lives a little way out of town; about three miles on the Fredrick turnpike."
"Ah, so far?"
"Yes. Go out until you come to the three-mile stone; then keep on to the first road, turning off to the right, along which you will go about a quarter of a mile, when you will see a brick house. Mr. Johnson lives there."
The thin, sallow-faced man bowed and retired. As he left the store, the doctor gave a low chuckle, and then said, half aloud—"I guess he won't try to find this Mr. John Johnson."
But he was mistaken. Three hours afterwards, the sick man entered the shop, and, sinking upon a chair with an expression of weariness, said, in a fretful tone—
"Well, doctor, I've been out where you said, but no Mr. John Johnson lives there."
"Mr. Johnson lives at the place to which I directed you," said the doctor, positively.
But the man shook his head.
"You went out the Fredrick road to the three-mile stone?"
"Yes."
"And turned off at the first road on the left-hand side?"
"You told me the right hand side!" said the man.
"Oh, there's the mistake," replied the doctor, with the air of a man who had discovered a very material error, by which an important result was affected; "I told you to turn off to the left."
"I'm sure you said the right," persisted the man.
"Impossible!" returned the doctor, in a most confident tone of voice. "How could I have said the right-hand side when I knew it was the left? I know Mr. Johnson as well as I know my own brother, and have been at his house hundreds of times."
"I am almost sure you said the right!" persisted the man.
"Oh, no! You misunderstood me," most positively answered the doctor.
"Well, I must only try it again," said the man, languidly; "but shall have to defer the walk until to-morrow, for I'm completely worn down."
"You'd better try a bottle of the RESTORER," said the doctor with a benevolent smile. "I know it will just suit your case. Mr. Johnson looked worse than you do, when he commenced taking it, and three bottles made a well man of him."
And the doctor held up a bottle of the Restorer, with its handsome label, temptingly, before the eyes of the sick man, adding, as he did so—
"It is only fifty cents."
"I've been humbugged too often!" replied the suspicious patron of patent-medicine venders. "No; I'll see Mr. Johnson first."
"Well, did you see Mr. Johnson?" asked the doctor with a pleasant smile and confident air, as the testimonial-hunter entered his shop on the next day, about noon.
"No, I did not," was replied, a little impatiently. "Ah? How comes that? Did you follow the directions I gave?"
"Yes, to the very letter."
"Then you must have found Mr. Johnson."
"But I tell you, I didn't."
"It's very strange! I can't understand it. You turned off at the first road to the left, after passing the third milestone?"
"I did."
"Two tall poplars stood at the gate which opened from the turnpike?"
"What gate?"
"The gate opening into the lane leading to Mr. Johnson's house."
"I didn't turn of at any gate," said the man. "I kept on, as you directed, to the first road that led off from the turnpike. You didn't mention any thing about a gate."
"I didn't suppose it necessary," replied the doctor, with a show of impatience. "A road is a road, whether you enter it by a gate or in any other manner. Roads leading to gentlemen's country-seats are not usually left open for every sort of ingress and egress. I don't wonder that you were unable to find Mr. Johnson."
"I wish you'd give me a more particular direction," said the invalid. "I'm nearly dead now with fatigue; I'll try once more to find this man, and if I don't turn him up, I'll let the matter drop. I don't believe your medicine will do me much good, anyhow."
"I'm sure it will help you," replied the doctor. "I can tell from your very countenance that it is what you want. Hundreds affected as you are have been restored to health. Better take a bottle."
"I want to see this Mr. Johnson first," persisted the sick man.
"Get a carriage, then. This walking in the hot sun is too much for you."
"Can't afford to ride in carriages. Have spent all my money in doctor-stuffs. Oh, dear! Well! You say this man lives just beyond the three-mile stone, at the first road leading off to the left?"
"Yes."
"Two poplars stand at the gate?"
"Yes."
"I ought to find that," said the man.
"You can find it, if you try," returned the doctor.
The man started off again.
"Plague on the persevering fellow!" muttered the man of drugs, as soon as the invalid retired.
"I wish I'd sent him six miles, instead of three."
The day wore on, but the testimonial-hunter did not reappear. Early on the next morning, however, his pale, thin face and emaciated brows were visible in the shop of the quack-doctor.
"Ah! good morning! good morning!" cried the latter, with one of the most assured smiles in the world. "You found Mr. Johnson, and pleasant of course?"
"Confound you, and Mr. Johnson, too! No!" replied the invalid impatiently.
The doctor was a man of great self-control, and, of course, did not in the least become offended.
"Strange!" said he, seriously. "You surely didn't follow my directions."
"I surely did. The first gate on the left-hand side. But your two tall poplars was one tall elm."
"There it is again!" and the doctor, in the fulness of his surprise, actually let a small package, that he held in his hand, fall upon the counter. "I told you poplars, distinctly. The elm-tree gate is at least a quarter of a mile this side. But, to settle the matter at once," and the doctor, speaking like a man who was about doing a desperate thing, turned to his shelves and took therefrom a bottle of the Universal Restorer—"here's the medicine. I know it will cure you. Take a bottle. It shall cost you nothing."
The sick man, tempted strongly by the hope of a cure, hesitated for a short time, and then said—
"I don't want your stuff for nothing. But half a dollar won't kill me."
So he drew a coin from his pocket, laid it upon the counter, and, taking the medicine, went slowly away.
"Rather a hard customer that," said the doctor to himself, with a chuckle, as he slipped the money in his drawer. "But I'll take good care to send the next one like him a little farther on his fool's errand. He'd much better have taken my word for it in the beginning."
The sick man never came back for a second bottle of the "Restorer." Whether the first bottle killed or cured him is, to the chronicler, unknown.
TRYING TO BE A GENTLEMAN
THE efforts which certain young men make, on entering the world, to become gentlemen, is not a little amusing to sober, thoughtful lookers on. To "become" is not, perhaps, what is aimed at, so much as to make people believe that they are gentlemen; for if you should happen to insinuate any thing to the contrary, no matter how wide from the mark they go, you may expect to receive summary punishment for your insolence.
One of these characters made himself quite conspicuous, in Baltimore, a few years ago. His name was L—, and he hailed from Richmond, we believe, and built some consequence upon the fact that he was a son of the Old Dominion. He dressed in the extreme of fashion; spent a good deal of time strutting up and down Market street, switching his rattan; boarded at one of the hotels; drank wines freely, and pretended to be quite a judge of their quality; swore round oaths occasionally, and talked of his honour as a gentleman.
His knowledge of etiquette he obtained from books, and was often quite as literal in his observance of prescribing modes and forms, as was the Frenchman in showing off his skill in our idioms, when he informed a company of ladies, as an excuse for leaving them, that he had "some fish to fry." That he was no gentleman, internally or externally, was plain to every one; yet he verily believed himself to be one of the first water, and it was a matter of constant care to preserve the reputation.
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