THE OMNIUM GATHERUM.

Ex-Sell-Sir.

The morning sun was shining bright,
As lone upon old Georgetown’s height,
A Bliss-ful doctor, clad in brown,
Desiring wealth and great renown,
Displayed aloft to wondering eyes
A shrub which bore this strange device,
Cundurango!
A maiden fair, with pallid cheek,
With ardent haste his aid did seek
To stay the progress and the pain
Of carcinoma of the brain;
While still aloft the shrub he bore,
The answer came, with windy roar,
To Cundurango!
A matron old, with long unrest
From carcinoma of the breast,
This Bliss-ful doctor rushed to see,
And begged his aid on bended knee.
The magic shrub waved still on high,
And rushed through air the well-known cry,
Try Cundurango!
The evening sun went down in red—
The maid and matron both were dead;
And yet, through all the realms around,
This worthless shrub, of mighty sound,
Will serve to fill the purse forlorn,
And the cancer succumb “in a horn”
To Cundurango.

The Object to be attained.

A doctor was called in to see a patient whose native land was Ireland, and whose native drink was whiskey. Water was prescribed as the only cure. Pat said it was out of the question; he could never drink it. Then milk was proposed, and Pat agreed to get well on milk. The doctor was soon summoned again. Near the bed on which the sick man lay was a table, and on the table a large bowl, and in the bowl was milk, but strongly flavored with whiskey.

“What have you here?” said the doctor.

“Milk, doctor; just what you orthered.”

“But there’s whiskey in it; I smell it.”

“Well, doctor,” sighed the patient, “there may be whiskey in it, but milk is my object.”

The Laugh wins.

An old lady reduced in circumstances applied to a physician to know if she might conscientiously sell some quack pills. The physician rather recommended that she should sell some pills made of bread, observing that, if they did no good, they would certainly do no harm. The old lady commenced business, and performed many cures with her pills, till at last she had great confidence in them. At length the physician, whom she called her benefactor, became ill by a bone sticking in his throat, which he could not pass up or down. In this situation the old lady visited him, and recommended her pills in his own language. The physician, upon this expression, burst out laughing, and in the act of laughing brought up the bone.

A notorious Female Doctor.

Washington, January 10, 1872.

From an account of the “Women’s National Suffrage Association,” reported to the Press, I cut the following description of a noted female doctress who dresses in a garb as near to a man’s as the cramped laws of the land will admit.

“Ten minutes after the opening ... a curly, crinkly feminine, in very large walking boots, came to the front, being followed, after a brief pause, by the rest of the sisters. This lady was new, even to the reporters, and one of them, handing up a pencilled inquiry to Mrs. Dr. Walker, was informed that she was ‘Mrs. Ricker, a beautiful, charming, and good widow, fair, forty, and rich.’ This bit of interesting news started on its travels.

········

“The doctor, who has the usual manly proclivity for hugging the girls, threw her arms around a pretty and modest-looking girl standing by, and enthusiastically shouted, “You are a dear, sweet little creature.” The frightened young woman drew hastily back, and faltered out that she was not in the habit of being hugged by men. This turned the laugh on the doctor; but she gained her lost ground by quickly replying to the inquiry of the secretary as to what place he should put her down from as a delegate, to put her down “from all the world;” but he objected, anxious for the completeness of his roster.“You must have a local habitation, you know.”

“Put me down from Washington, then, for that is the home of everybody who has none other.”

Unmindful of the eloquent protest of her coat and pantaloons against feminine distinctions, he wrote her down as “Mrs. Mary Walker;” but seizing the pencil from his fingers, she spitefully erased the “Mrs.” and wrote “Doctor.”

“I never was Mrs.; I never will be.”

A White Man turning Black.

The San Francisco Examiner says a gentleman of that city, about twenty-five years of age, ruddy complexion, curly red hair, who had an intractable and painful ulcer on the left arm, resisting all previous modes of treatment, yielded to the request of trying the effect of transplanting a piece of skin to the ulcer from another person. The ulcer was prepared in the usual manner by his physician, and a bit of skin, about an inch square, was taken from the arm of a fine healthy negro man and immediately spread over the ugly ulcer, and then carefully dressed and bandaged. The skin transplantation had the desired effect. Healthy granulation sprang up, and the unsightly ulcer soon healed. A few months afterwards he went to his physician and told him that ever since the sore healed the black skin commenced to spread, and it was increasing. About one third of his arm was completely negroed. The doctor himself was alarmed. The high probability is, that the whole skin of this white man will become negro.

An officer had a wooden leg so exceedingly well made that it could scarcely be distinguished from a real one. A cannon ball carried it off. A soldier who saw him fall called out, “Quick, run for the surgeon.” “No,” replied the officer, coolly; “it is the joiner I want.”

“Squashy.”

Squashy was a contraband. He came from North Carolina. He was looking about Washington for “a new masser,” when Dr. ——, of —— regiment C. V., took him for a body servant.

SQUASHY’S SURGICAL OPERATION ON THE DOCTOR.The doctor was out on horseback at parade that very day, and the most that Squashy had as yet learned of his master was, that he was handsome.

“Dat’s him! Dar’s my new masser! see um! see um! ridin’ on hoss-back, dar!” exclaimed the contraband to a host of other negroes watching the parade.

That night, when the doctor returned to his quarters, Squashy came to assist in removing some of the superfluous and dirt-covered garments of his new master, amongst which were his heavy and mud-splashed boots.

The doctor was a joker. “Now, what’s your name, boy?”

“Squashy, sar; dat’s what dey called me, sar,” replied the contraband, showing a gorgeous row of ivories, and the whites of two great, globular eyes.

“Well, Squashy,—that’s a very appropriate name,—just pull off these boots. Left one first. There—pull! hard! harder!—There she comes! Now the other; now pull; it always comes the hardest; pull strong—stronger—now it’s coming—O, murder! you’ve pulled my whole leg out!”

Sure enough, the boot, leg and all, came off at the thigh, and slap! crash! bang! over backwards, over a camp-stool, on to the floor, went Squashy, with the boot and wooden leg of the doctor grasped tightly in his brawny hands.

“O, de Lord!” cried Squashy, rising. “I didn’t go for to do it! O, Lord, see um bleed!” he continued, as in the uncertain light he saw a bit of red flannel round the stump; and, dropping the leg, he turned, and with a look of the utmost terror depicted on his countenance, he fled from the apartment.On the following day the doctor made diligent inquiry for Squashy; but he never was found, and probably to this day thinks he pulled out the leg of his “new and hansum masser.”

We do not know who wrote the following which is too good to be lost; hence we give it anonymously.

MOTHER’S FOOL.
“’Tis plain enough to see,” said a farmer’s wife,
“These boys will make their marks in life;
They never were made to handle a hoe,
And at once to college ought to go.
There’s Fred, he’s little better than a fool,
But John and Henry must go to school.”
“Well, really, wife,” quoth farmer Brown,
As he set his mug of cider down,
“Fred does more work in a day for me
Than both his brothers do in three.
Book larnin’ will never plant one’s corn,
Nor hoe potatoes, sure’s you’re born,
Nor mend a rod of broken fence:
For my part, give me common sense.”
But his wife was bound the roost to rule,
And John and Henry were sent to school,
While Fred, of course, was left behind,
Because his mother said he had no mind.
Five years at school the students spent,
Then into business each one went.
John learned to play the flute and fiddle,
And parted his hair, of course, in the middle,
While his brother looked rather higher than he,
And hung out a sign, “H. Brown, M. D.”
Meanwhile, at home, their brother Fred
Had taken a notion into his head;
But he quietly trimmed his apple trees,
Milked the cows and hived the bees;
While somehow, either by hook or crook,
He managed to read full many a book,
Until at last his father said
He was getting “book larnin’” into his head;
“But for all that,” added farmer Brown,
“He’s the smartest boy there is in town.”
The war broke out, and Captain Fred
A hundred men to battle led,
And, when the rebel flag came down,
Went marching home as General Brown.
But he went to work on the farm again,
And planted corn and sowed his grain;
He shingled the barn and mended the fence,
Till people declared he had common sense.
Now common sense was very rare,
And the State House needed a portion there;
So the “family dunce” moved into town,
The people called him Governor Brown;
And his brothers, who went to the city school,
Came home to live with “mother’s fool.”

Who it was.

There is an anecdote told of Dr. Emmons, one of the most able of New England divines, meeting a Pantheistical physician at the house of a sick parishioner. It was no place for a dispute. It was no place for any unbecoming familiarity with the minister. It was no place for a physician to inquire into the age of the minister, especially with any intent of entangling him in a debate; and, above all, where the querist was too visionary for any logical discussion. But the abrupt question of the Pantheist was, “Mr. Emmons, how old are you?”

“Sixty, sir; and how old are you?” came the quick reply.

“As old as creation, sir,” was the triumphant response.

“Then you are of the same age with Adam and Eve.”

“Certainly; I was in the garden when they were.”

“I have always heard that there was a third party in the garden with them, but I never knew before that it was you.”

A heavy Doctor.

Dr. Stone, of Savannah, walked into the river at Savannah, and, like other stones, was about to sink, when he was romantically rescued by a brave lady.

Scottish Hospitality.

The Scotch people—even the females—are great smokers, and female tobacco-users are not considered the embodiment of neatness.

“WILL YE TAK’ A BLAST NOO?”

The Countess of A., with a laudable desire to promote tidiness in the various cottages on her estate, used to visit them periodically, and exhort the inmates to cleanliness. One cottage was always found especially untidy; and getting, perhaps, the least out of patience, the countess took up a brush-broom, and having by its dexterous use made the room much improved, she turned to the housewife, who, with pipe between her lips, had been sitting on a stool, with body bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin resting in the palms of her hands, watching the proceeding. The Countess said,—

“There, my good woman, is it not much better?”

“Ay, my leddy,” said the woman, nodding her head, and rising, she stepped towards the countess, drew the pipe from her mouth, and wiping it with her brawny palm, presented it, saying,—

“An’ will ye tak’ a blast noo, my leddy?”

Animals in the Stomach.

Most physicians scout the idea of terrestrial animals or reptiles living in one’s stomach. The wife of Captain Hodgden, of Mount Desert, presented the writer with a singular looking reptile some three inches in length, looking not unlike an earwig, excepting having two horns on its head, which animal she said crawled from her mouth the night previous. She declared for years that there was a live animal in her stomach, and attributed its dislodgment to the use of some bitters (Chelone glabra).

A nice old lady called at our office one day, some years ago, during my absence, and informed Dr. Colley, who was attending my patients temporarily, that she had a live animal in her stomach. The doctor tells the story as follows:—

“‘Now don’t you laugh at me, doctor, ’cause all the doctors do, and I know it ain’t no whim nor notion I’ve got in my head, but a real live animal I’ve got into my stomach,’ she said.

“I looked at the good old lady, and could not find it in my heart to tell her she was laboring under a delusion, therefore I replied, very sympathetically,—

REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH.

“‘O, no doubt you are right, and all the doctors have been wrong. Why, just sit quiet a moment, and I will show you a whole bottle full that the doctor has from time to time taken from the stomachs of patients.’ So saying, I went into the laboratory, and got down a bottle of centipedes, lizards, and a big, black, southern horn-bug, which the doctor’s brother had collected in the South, and, dusting off the bottle, took it to the old lady, who sat comfortably in a rocking-chair, taking snuff, and nervously humming a little pennyroyal tune.

“‘There, madam—there is a host of various kinds of reptiles, which the doctor has compelled to abandon the living stomach.’

“‘Du tell,’ she exclaimed, readjusting her glasses, ‘if them all come out of folks’ stomachs! Let me take the bottle.’

“‘I suppose they really did, marm.’

“‘And the big black one; who did that come out of?’ she asked, turning the bottle around to get a view of the ugly monster—horns two inches long!

“‘O, let me see. That came out of a colored man—awful appetite, madam.’

“‘Du tell! Well, I’m much obleeged to you for showing them to me. Now I’ll go right home, and pitch into them doctors. I knowed they’re all wrong.’ And so saying, the old lady arose, buzzed round and round like a bee in a bottle, got her reticule, and started for the door.

“‘O, I forgot,’ she exclaimed, coming back. ‘Give me some of the medicine to get this animal out of my system, doctor.’

“I gave her a quantity of gentian, told her to use no snuff for two months, and she would have no further trouble with the animal; that she must not expect to see him, as they seldom came away whole, like those in the bottle. She promised, with a sigh, and a sorry look at the snuff-box, and went away. I have no doubt but I did the best thing possible for her case.”

Stories about Little Folks.

As ludicrous as the above may seem, it is true; but we cannot vouch for the truth of the following story:—

The Boy with a Bullet in him.—A lad swallowed a small bullet. His friends were very much alarmed about it; and his father thinking no pains should be spared to save his darling boy’s life, sent post haste to a surgeon of skill, directing the messenger to tell the circumstances and urge his coming without delay. The doctor was found, heard the dismal tale, and with as much unconcern as he would manifest in a case of common headache, wrote the following laconic reply:—

Sir: Don’t alarm yourself. If after three weeks the bullet is not removed, give the boy a charge of powder.

Yours, &c., ——

P. S. Do not aim the boy at anybody.—M. D.