The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-25
UTHE ATLANTIC. -

"THE ATLANTIC"
The contents of the December number Of
the atlantic are as folows:-
Confessions of Patent Medicine Man,
Ralph Keller; "The Prayer-Seeker, John
G. Whittier; "Oldtown Fireside Stories,"
Harriet Beecher Stowe; 'Resemblances be-
tween the Buddhist and the Roman Catholic
Religions" L. Maria Child; ''Joseph and his
Friend" MI, Bayard Taylor; GA Strip of
Blue, Lucy Larcom; 'Black Christmas at
Dix Cove;" Travelling Companions" H.
Henry James, Jr.; ga Plea for Silence" II.
T. Tuckerman; "Afoot on Colorado Desert"
Stephen Powers; ''Father Blumhardt's Pray.
erful Hotel;' "Rudolph: Monograph, Bar
net Phillips; ''Indian Summer" Frances Lee
Pratt "The Miracle Play of 1870, in Bethle-
hem, New Hampshire, H. H.; "Flitting,"
land Thirty-fve Years Ago." w. "John
Bull at Feed" W. j. Stillman; "Reviews and
Literary Notices"
From Ralph Keeler's Confessions of
Patent Medicine Man" we make this ex-
tract:-
My corn-salve was made of potash and
gum arabic. 1t would do it's work in five
minutes, but of course it made the foot out
rageously sore afterward. ihis was q matter
of very little inconvenience to me, because
my business required me to be moving con-
tinually from place to place. 1 always man.
aged to get out of town on the flood tide of
my reputation as an effective chropodist.
1t will be easily believed that L did not ac-
quire my skill and self-reliance as an operator
all at once. My corn-salve grew in my conf
dence from the feet it fed on. You think
that is q queer expression? You cannot,
then, be aware of the corrosive nature of
potash Well, sir, experience and special
knowledge are everything in ones business.
l will confess that was nervous before my
first patient The salve had never been tried,
and friend told me l had better not try it.
! But my subject was good one, and rather
an anomaly, too, in life 1 think you hardly
ever heard before of poor shoemaker with
| corns. That describes my first patient.
mustered up courage at last, and hourished
an old razor at him with quite a professional
air for youth of sixteen. The job was not
as neat one as l learned to do afterward
but still it gave temporary satisfaction; and
l sold that shoemaker two boxes of the
| salve
And thus 1 went about over wide extent
of territory, leaving know not what number
| of sore feet behind me. | have no better idea
how much mere pedal distress L might have
worked on a credulous community, had 1t
not been for an accident which, at the end of
q couple of years. overlook me in my career.
l had left great quantity of my salve and
which 1 was then making my
headquarters. They were carefully
packed, l remember, in neat paper boxes On
my return, after an unusually long trip,
found that the internal potash had eaten up
the paper boxes, and, making its devouring
way to my cough-lozenges, had involved my
whole stock in one agglomerate mass of ruin.
Out of my temporary despair, however,
sprang lucky inspiration. You have doubt
less heard much of the happy elasticity of
youth. There is, l grant, something avail
able in that, but found something great
deal better for my business in the rapid
growth and physical changes of that period of
my life The fact is, L had grown and
altered so in appearance since 1 had
the time of this appalling accident no one of
my first patients would have recognized me
from a mere surgical acquaintance of two
years before.I L may say here, in fact, that
these repeated changes in my physical APP
pearance, aided by the cropping of my hair,
or the abandoning of it to excessive length,
and at last by the coming of my beard,' were,
all through my early experiences, of untold
advantage to me. Thus, in the course of
time, L became personally acquainted with all
the people who could be duped in a given
region of country, and with every new
project or nostrum l returned unrec-
ogniZed to them over and over again.
Now out of the potashes of the agglom-
crate ruin of my entire stock in trade sprang,
Ph9nix-like, lucky inspiration, as l have
before said, without the present Indifferent
joke, which is altogether accidental. While
contemplating my irretrievabe loss l con-
ceived the idea of patent pain-killer, which
Iwould go about selling to cure the sores left
by my corn salve.
AS a general thing, money, or, I should
say, the want of it, gets the immortal work
out of first-cass brains. l read the substance
of that remark in a newspaper; or was it Q
magazine? It doesn't matter; / believe it,
and l verified it III the production of thai
pain-killer; that's enough. Well, sir
the project worked to a charm. l com
menced operations, of course, in almost the
exact traces of my former chiropodal exploits
1t was not long, therefore, till L came upon
my first patient, the shoemaker. l began
cautiously to extol the stomachic virtues oi
my medicine, and gradually led up to its ex
terDal application. 1t was good, l assured
him, for bruises, sprains--still keeping my
eye stealthily on his, from under my hat, tC
catch anyfaint CLEAN of eeognition-bruisss
sprains, wonnds, sores
son the feet z" asked he, interrupting IN,
in my catalogue of positive cures.
Certainly; better for the feet than fo
anything else.
'WelI, / have sore feet, and that's th,
fact" said the shoemaker. ''You see ther,
was a rogue of a fellow around here a coupl,
of years ago curing corns, and he made ny
feet So If l ever catch the villain I'll use