The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-07-30
THE WRONG ELIXIR.

THE WRONG ELIXIR.
In the days when science was more
poetical and less scientific than it is
now there lived a certain alchemist.
He was an old man. His feet shuffied
and his knees doddered as he walked.
He had the gray and hairy face of a
sick monkey. His knowledge was so
profound that he was generally re-
spected, and his temper was so abomi-
nable that he was intensely unpop-
ular.
Therefore, when on a fine morning
in May he came down to breakfast
placence and entirely omitted to
curse the cook (his universal proceed
ure before taking food, his wife and
family were surprised and a little
nervous. 1t was SO unlike him. His
wife asked him if he were unwell. He
not only answered the question,
though on principle he never an
swered his wife's questions and usu-
ally affected not to hear her speak,
but he even added a thank you" to
his mo" She was the more dis
tressed, and he noticed it. He never
thanked anybody. 1t portended some
thing serious. lA
''The fact is" he said, "that the
studies of a lifetime eliminated last
night in a discovery which 1 believe
to be of Importance. Hence my I'M
usual hilarity."
Hilarity was perhaps a strong word
for it. Yet even great and tumul-
tuous joy would have been compre-
hensible considering the nature of his
discovery.
rs it the philosophers stone?" his
wife asked.
But he was in no mood to overdo
his vein of gracious Observation-Disclosures
He stared at her stonily as if she
were something in a bottle which he
had already analysed. Then he
shuffied out toward his laboratory.
1t was not the philosophers stone
1t was, if possible, an even greater
discovery, for in the elixir which that
very night he meant to taste he held
to be the secret of eternal life. Eter-
nal life was in these dark ages con-
sidered desirable by quite number
of people.
He did not propose to communicate
his secret to any of his fellows. 1t
was to be for himself alone. They
would go and he would remain, growing
slowly into the wonder of the whole
world. There were even indications in
his researches that made it seem prob
able that with the unlimited years of
life there would be an accession of
youth. His hair would grow again and
he would get new teeth and perhaps
learn once more the meaning of the
word romance EmperOrS would come
from the east to look upon him-the
one man in the world who held the
secret.
In the meantime he was not dis
posed to be idle. His ordinary avoca-
lions called him. A gypsy faced slut
of a girl had come to him with gold
pieces, got, the devil knows how. The
alchemist did not inquire. He tested
the gold and found it true. "And for
this?" he asked.
There is a man." she said in a
tired, uninterested way, "who has got
to die. l need a very swift poison
and one that leaves no trace of poison
in the body
Painless he inquired.
hnr oh tel
of no Importance she said. He begged
her to come to him again in three
days.
He was man of vast experience and
had no trouble in satisfying the simple
needs, OF the gypsy girl He took one
ed and cooked and strained. When he
had finished he had a pale green liquor
WITH neither taste nor smell. A drop
a gallon of 1T would have defed the best
of our modern chemists. It was of the
himself was to drink that evening.
And, of course, he made the usual mis-
strong waters to give him courage for his
experiment, and the courage had been |
bought at the expense of clearheaded-
At any rate he reached his hand to the
over. He had drunk the poison that had |
been intended for the gypsy girls faith |
ciay-coiored WORKOUT S al humanity, iu on the
studio floor, with a fixed grin on his face /
that would have frightened people. His
wife found him there in the morning and
wept bitterly, and was sincerely sorry |
that she would never hear him curse the |
cook again. There was a glass filled with /
a greenish fluid, and this she threw away |
not knowing that she had lost here the /
that had never been made till |
then and will never be made again. It |
to her safer. The gypsy girl was
but said nothing. She had |
enough money left to buy herself knife,
and she got into serious trouble over it. |
That he took the poison is undoubted.
That he took the wrong elixir is point
On which l should like to have the dead |
mans opinion.11Barry Pain, in London
Sphere.