You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser, I said to him you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, cant you see that I dont want to leave you? Cant you see that were both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more?
Maybe youll say he didnt understand maybe he didnt. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.
Doggie, says he, finally, we dont live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more Im a flat, and if you do youre flatter; and thats no flattery. Im offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.
There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.
On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun:
Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.
But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured[113] son of a door mat, do you know what Im going to call you?
I thought of Lovey, and I whined dolefully.
Im going to call you Pete, says my master; and if Id had five tails I couldnt have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.
The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon[114].
The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum[115] and paregoric[116]. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé[117]. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikeys corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé[117]. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikeys corniform, be-spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.
Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddles two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain you must have guessed it Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum[118] of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes[119] and valerianate of ammonia[120].
The fly in Ikeys ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk McGowan.
Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no outfielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikeys friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.
One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.
Ikey, said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin[121] to a powder, get busy with your ear. Its drugs for me if youve got the line I need.