[Illustration:  New way of taking Seidlitz powders]

“I should think you would drive all the customers away from the store,” said the groceryman as he opened the door to let the fresh air in.

“I don’t know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I shall stay.  You see, I sha’n’t practice on anybody but Pa for a spell.  I made up my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of powdered borax, and she came back mad.  Pa seems to want to encourage me, and is willing to take anything that I ask him to.  He had a sore throat and wanted something for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some tannin and chlorate of potash in a mortar and grind it, and I let Pa pound it with the mortar, and while he was pounding I dropped in a couple of drops of sulphuric acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa’s hat clear across the store, and Pa was whiter than a sheet.  He said he guessed his throat was all right, and he wouldn’t come near me again that day.  The next day Pa came in, and I was laying for him.  I took a white seidletz powder and a blue one, and dissolved them in separate glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he didn’t want some lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one and he drank it.  He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other glass that looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he drank it.  Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa’s stummick, and began to siz and steam and foam, Pa pretty near choked to death, and the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and as soon as he could get his breath he yelled ‘fire,’ and said he was poisoned, and called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a doctor right in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a stomach pump and would have baled him out in no time, only the proprietor came in and told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of brandy, and Pa said he felt better.  Pa has learned where we keep the liquor, and he comes in two or three times a day with a pain in his stomach.  They play awful mean tricks on a boy in a drug store.  The first day they put a chunk of something blue into a mortar, and told me to pulverize it and then make it up into two grain pills.  Well, sir, I pounded that chunk all the forenoon, and it never pulverized at all, and the boss told me to hurry up as the woman was waiting for the pills, and I mauled it till I was nearly dead, and when it was time to go to supper the boss came and looked in the mortar, and took out the chunk and said, ’You dum fool, you have been pounding all day on a chunk of India rubber, instead of blue mass!’ Well, how did I know?  But I will get even with them if I stay there long enough, and don’t you forget it.  If you have a prescription you want filled you can come down to the store and I will put it up for you myself, and then you will be sure to get what you pay for.”