Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1890-08-09
HIS BLUNDER.
BY C. f. CASE.

John Kelly had but lately settled IL
Metropolisville, and people only knew
him as a seemingly respectable drug
gist. Two years before he had left a
drug store in Chicago, into which he
had been introduced by parents in Boiler
avenue, who found that the rearing OF
so many children and so many goats at
the same time was likely to reduce too
much the surplus OF their revenue, and
80 lessened the former membranes as
fast as they could find situations for
them.
He had been taken in to sweep
the store, and he did it so well
that slight promotion soon followed,
and this in a few months fully
fitted him, according to the inventory
he took Of himself, for business on his
own hook; and as he had recently
drawn lottery prize which, by some
chance, had escaped the usual home
protection, he went West and opened
the Eagle drug store at Butternut
Ridge. Here he rapidly rose in his
own esteem, and after a few weeks study
of pharmacologv, as taught in the dis
pensstory, he adopted the more enter
prising and more economical plan of
manufacturing most of his own mix
lures.
Things went on with a Frightening
horizon till one day his aptitude to
make errors tripped him up.
La grippe had Just shown itself at
Butternut Ridge, or the citizens mag
snA1 11-1.oh AZ L.
thing, and Kelly, with his usual
promptness in emergencies, at once
discovered an infallible remedy for it,
and advertised.
{ He had, however, an old customer,
who never yearned after new discov-
cries in medical science, but whose
confidence was soidly anchored to q
Tom-snd-Jerry preparation that had
been prescribed in his youth and to
which he had been very Loyalty at
tached through manhood. The corpo-
ration, though, had voted and more or
less adopted prohibition as the headline
of its moral creed, and Tom-and-Jerry
unadorned fell under this sumptuary
law, and was interdicted.
The customer referred to, Mr.. Gill
hooly, with Mr.. Kelly's chemical sug-
gestions and pharmaceutical know
ledge, arranged stimulating
substitute that slipped under the
protection of law as medicine
but still held at the will of the opera
tor all the untamed restlessness of
forty-rod bourbon.
The afternoon of which we speak
Kelly had mixed gallon jar of this
medicine and another similar jar of the
new remedy for the grippe; and, in
setting them away had wholly forgotten
whether the Tom and Jerry improve
ment was at the right of the asafetida
bottle and the grippe solution on the
Left, or vice versa.
This indecision in drug store is not
as safe as among hardware, and, con-
sequently, when the matron of the
young ladies' seminary informed him
that nearly her whole flock was labor
ing under the preliminary indisposiion
of the Russian invader, Kelly gave her
three-quarters of Gillhooly's mixture
by mistake, and advised an
immediate aud liberal absorption. A
little later the Reverend Mr.. Smythe
came in, and protesting similar af-
fiction took the last quart from the
same jar and wentto his duties with q
faith in pharmacy that was likely to
fade with time.
Mr.. Gillhooly called later still, and
said that as he had to address a caucus
that evening it was absolutely essential
that he should fortifY himself with half
u gallon of his fayorite dissolvent
Kelly locked his store that night with
q tolerably clear conscience, and
pretty strong confidence, In his ability
to work the world with one sort OF
lever or another whatever happened
In the morning he was interviewed
by the Mayor and other prominent
citizens, who explained that his rem
edies had entirely failed to fulfill