strength in the region where it was weak; and of course he succumbed.  If you will think for a moment of the special businesses that have survived the competition of the department store, you will see that they are precisely the ones that have resisted this temptation to spread themselves and have been content to remain experts.  Look at the men’s furnishing stores.  Would they have survived if they had begun to sell cigars and lawn-mowers?  Look at the retail shoe stores, the opticians, the cigar stores, the bakers, the meat markets, the confectioners, the restaurants of all grades!  They have all to compete with the department stores, but their customers realize that they have something to offer that can be offered by no department store—­expert service in one line, due to some one’s life-long training, experience and devotion to the public.

I do not want the pharmacist to go the way of the book dealers.  Already some of the department stores include drug departments.  I do not see how these can be as good as independent pharmacies.  But I do not see the essential difference between a drug department in a store that sells also cigars and stationery and confectionery, and a so-called independent pharmacy that also distributes these very things.

I am assuming that the druggist is an expert.  That is the object of our colleges of pharmacy, as I understand the matter.  As a librarian I want to deal with a book man who knows more of the book business than I do.  I want to ask his advice and be able to rely on it.  When I have printing to be done, I like to give it to a man who knows more about the printed page than I do.  When I buy bread, or shoes, or a house, or a farm I like to deal with recognized experts in these articles.  How much more when I am purchasing substances where expert knowledge will turn the balance between life and death.  I have gossiped with pharmacists enough to know that all physicians do not avoid incompatibles in their prescriptions, and that occasionally a combination falls into the prescription clerk’s hands, which, if made up as he reads it would produce a poisonous compound, or perhaps even an explosive mixture.  Two heads are better than one, and if my physician ever makes a mistake of this kind I look to my pharmacist to see that it shall not reach the practical stage.

I recognize the great value and service of the department store, but I do not go there for my law or medicine; neither do I care to resort thither for my pharmacy.  I want our separate drug stores to persist, and I want them to remain in charge of experts.

And when the store deals in other things than purely therapeutic preparations—­which I have already said I think probably unavoidable,—­I want it to present the aspect of a pharmacy that deals also in toilet preparations and mineral water, not of an establishment for dispensing soda-water and soap, where one may have a prescription filled on the side, in an emergency.  And when the emergency does arise,