on the other hand no one could run a patent medicine on the lines of
warning the public as to what it isn't good for. You say on the wrapper it
will cure gout and rheumatism. If a woman buys a bottle and gives it to her
child who has got scarlet fever, and the child dies from it, it's her
lookout and not yours. When a firm does issue a warning such as 'Won't Wash
Clothes,' it's a business proceeding for the firm's own protection."

"Well, we'll issue a warning, 'Won't Cure Blisters,'" said Sypher. "I
advertise myself as the Friend of Humanity. I am, according to my lights.
If I let poor fellows on the march reduce their feet to this condition I
should be the scourge of mankind like"--he snapped his fingers trying to
recall the name--"like Atlas--no it wasn't Atlas, but no matter. Not a box
of the Cure has been sold without the guarantee stamp of my soul's
conviction on it."

"The Jebusa Jones people aren't so conscientious," said Dennymede. "I
bought a pot of their stuff this morning. They've got a new wrapper. See."
He unfolded a piece of paper and pointed out the place to his chief. "They
have a special paragraph in large print: 'Gives instant relief to blistered
feet. Every mountaineer should carry it in his gripsack.'"

"They're the enemies of God and man," said Sypher, "and sooner than copy
their methods I would close down the factory and never sell another box as
long as I lived."

"It's a thousand pities, sir, anyhow," said Dennymede, trying to work back
diplomatically, "that the army contract scheme has to be thrown overboard."

"Yes, it's a nuisance," said Sypher.

When he had dismissed the traveler he laughed grimly. "A nuisance!"

The word was a grotesque anticlimax.

He sat for a long while with his hands blinding his eyes, trying to
realize what the abandonment of the scheme meant to him. He was a man who
faced his responsibilities squarely. For the first time in his life he had
tried the Cure seriously on himself--chance never having given him cause
before--and it had failed. He had heard the Cure which he regarded as a
divine unction termed a pestilential quackery; the words burned red-hot in
his brain. He had heard it depreciated, with charming tact and courtesy, by
a great authority on diseases of the skin. One short word, "no," had wiped
out of existence his Napoleonic scheme for the Armies of the World--for
putting them on a sound footing. He smiled bitterly as the incongruous jest
passed throu