die
like hurt dogs. There is a current aberration that the golden age was
"once upon a time," but, in my opinion, it is here and now, or at least
it will be when every municipality has instituted classes to teach
policemen the difference between drunkenness and a fit. I will say a
prayer about this some of these days. One must be business-like.

As he builds up and smokes a cigarette, the doctor tells me that the
navvies and teamsters have a singularly critical taste in the matter of
medicine. They do not like tablets or medicine with an innocent
flavour. Unless it be distinctly pungent, they feel cheated.

"Do you accede to their demand?" ask I.

"I do, Good Lady," says he. "It is modesty that prevents my describing
to you the excellency of my flavours" (and here he assumed a truly
sagacious air): "my medicines have 'nip' to them and a body that is
really desirable. They are indescribable, but most they approach the
little girl's definition of salt--'that which makes potatoes taste bad
when you do not eat it with.'

"I see, Dear Lady, you are still of inquisitive mind," says this Man of
Medicine. "Yes! I can see that and I dare say you will put me in a
book, so I shall not rise to your questions--not I! Let us prefer to
talk of how we shall invest our money when we sell our lots, and things
like that."

"Real-estate is a valuable asset in this place," continues he, "if you
buy it 'near in' on the original town site, but three miles out of the
subdivisions, it is equal in value to a pop-corn prize. And yet who
can say? Who knows? In these new places, the bread we cast on the
sub-divisions has a way of returning to us in meat and pie and cake.
It is often the height of wisdom to be foolish. That singularly
unattractive person on the doorstep across the way--the shrunken,
hollow-stomached one--has made much money in buying and selling."

"Do you believe me?" he asks with some trace of heat; "then pray heaven
speak!" For I have fallen into silence. But I will not speak--not one
word--but only smile in an enigmatical way, for the stop I am pulling
out is one of intended indifference. It is about the navvies and
teamsters I would talk and not of hollow-stomached men who gather much
money.

The doctor rolls up two cigarettes and offers me one.

"You will smoke?" asks he.

"No!" says I, "not till I am sixty."

"Let me see your palm and your nails. Humph! Lady, you had better
start now as a mere