“Business hadn’t been good in the last town, so I only had five dollars.  I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for half a gross of eight-ounce bottles and corks.  I had the labels and ingredients in my valise, left over from the last town.  Life began to look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running from the tap, and the Resurrection Bitters lining up on the table by the dozen.

[Illustration:  “Life began to look rosy again...”]

“Fake?  No, sir.  There was two dollars’ worth of fluid extract of cinchona and a dime’s worth of aniline in that half-gross of bitters.  I’ve gone through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for ’em again.

“I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on Main Street.  Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a compound hypothetical pneumocardiac anti-scorbutic tonic was just what I diagnosed the crowd as needing.  The bitters started off like sweetbreads-on-toast at a vegetarian dinner.  I had sold two dozen at fifty cents apiece when I felt somebody pull my coat tail.  I knew what that meant; so I climbed down and sneaked a five dollar bill into the hand of a man with a German silver star on his lapel.

[Illustration:  “I commenced selling the bitters on Main Street.”]

“‘Constable,’ says I, ‘it’s a fine night.’

“‘Have you got a city license,’ he asks, ’to sell this illegitimate essence of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?’

“‘I have not,’ says I.  ’I didn’t know you had a city.  If I can find it to-morrow I’ll take one out if it’s necessary.’

“‘I’ll have to close you up till you do,’ says the constable.

“I quit selling and went back to the hotel.  I was talking to the landlord about it.

“‘Oh, you won’t stand no show in Fisher Hill,’ says he.  ’Dr. Hoskins, the only doctor here, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they won’t allow no fake doctor to practice in town.’

“‘I don’t practice medicine,’ says I, ’I’ve got a State peddler’s license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.’

“I went to the Mayor’s office the next morning and they told me he hadn’t showed up yet.  They didn’t know when he’d be down.  So Doc Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpson-weed regalia, and waits.

“By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to me and asks the time.

“‘Half-past ten,’ says I, ’and you are Andy Tucker.  I’ve seen you work.  Wasn’t it you that put up the Great Cupid Combination package on the Southern States?  Let’s see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement ring, a wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and Dorothy Vernon—­all for fifty cents.’

“Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him.  He was a good street man; and he was more than that—­he respected his profession, and he was satisfied with 300 per cent. profit.  He had plenty of offers to go into the illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never to be tempted off of the straight path.