Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-07-25
HIS BLUNDER.
BY c. Il. CASE.

John Kelly had but lately settled in
Metropolisville, and people only knew
him as a seemingly respectable drug
gist. Two years before he had left q
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
so 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 we'll
that a slight promotion soon followed,
and this in q 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 o 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
W esteem, and after a few weeks study
of pharmacologv, as taught in the dis
pensatory. 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 n day his aptitude to
make errors tripped him up.
La grippe had just shown itself at
Butternut Ridge, or the citizens mag
med so, which in effect was the same
thing, and Kelly, with his usual
promptness in emergencies, at once
discovered an infallible remedy for it,
and advertised.
OHe had, however, an old customer,
who never yearned after new discov-
cries in medical science, but whose
confidence was solidly anchored to a
Tom-and-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 it's moral creed, and Tom-and-Jerry
unadorned fell under this sumrtuary
law, and wa interdicted.
The customer referred to-, MI. Gill
hooly, with Mr.. Kelly's chemical sug-
gestions and pharmaceutical krow-
ledge, arranged a stimulating
substitute that slipped under the
protection of law as a 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 a gallon jar OF thi:
medicine and another similar jar of the
remedy for the grippe; and, il
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 a drug store is moi
as safe as among hardware, and, con
sequently, when the matron OF the
young ladies' seminary informed hin
that nearly her whole flock was labor
ing under the preliminary indisposi.iol
of the Russian invader, Kelly gave he7
three-quarters Of Gillhooly's mixture
by mistake, and advised al
immediate aud liberal absorption. 4
little later the Reverend MI. Smytht
came in, and protesting a similar af
Fiction took the last quart from til,
same jar and went to his duties with
faith in pharmacy that was likely tt
fade with time.
Mr.. Gillhooly called later still, ant
said that as he had to address a caucu
that evening it was absolutely e%ssentia
that he should fortify himself with hal
gallon of his favorite dissolvent.
Kelly locked his store that night will
q tolerably clear conscience, and
pretty strong confidence in his abilit,
to work the world with one sort of
lever O. another whatever happened.
In the morning he was interviewed
by the Mayor and other prominen
citizens, who explained that his rem
-sdies had entirely failed to fulfil