to him. When
he reached his home, he thought he would try to make out what this
prescription was; but when he opened the paper, he found nothing but the
word "catnip." It is not likely that he ever again tried to take
advantage of the medical profession.

But it was not always Jersey doctors whose wit shone brightest in a
financial transaction. There was a doctor in the town of Rocky Hill who
was sent for to attend a poor old man who was suffering with a piece of
bone sticking in his throat. The doctor went immediately to the old
man's house, and it was not long before the bone was out. As the doctor
was packing up his instruments, the old fellow, whose name was William,
inquired how much he would have to pay; and the doctor replied that for
an operation of that sort his charge was five dollars. This quite
astonished William, who probably had not five cents in the house; but he
wished to pay his debts, and not to be considered a pauper patient, and
so he asked the doctor if he might come to his house and work out the
bill. The doctor replied that that would be entirely satisfactory to
him, and that William might come the next day and work in the garden.

The next day old William went to the doctor's house. All day he
faithfully dug and hoed and raked. Toward the end of the afternoon the
doctor came into the garden, and, after informing William that he might
come again, he casually asked him how much he charged for a day's work.
William stood up and promptly answered, that for a day's labor in the
garden his charge was five dollars. Now was the doctor surprised.

"You don't mean," he exclaimed, "that you are going to ask five dollars
for one day's labor!"

"That is exactly my price," said William. "If two minutes' yanking with
a pair of pincers at a little bone is worth five dollars, then one day's
hard labor in tilling the ground is worth just as much."

It often happens that doctors are men of wit and humor; and it is
recorded that a New Jersey physician, named Dr. Hole, was the author of
the first version of a tombstone epitaph which afterwards became widely
known and used. The lines of Dr. Hole are cut upon a tombstone of a
child, and run as follows:--

"A dropsy sore long time I bore:
Forsitions were in vain
Till God above did hear my moan,
And eased me of my pain."

That some of those early doctors were honest is proved by a doctor's
bill which is now preserved in the New Jersey Histor