Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 05, May 22, 1858

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by STEPHEN H. BRANCH, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
very silly, as ointment will soon cure it.” He said: “I knew a man who applied ointment five years, and his itch got worse every year.” This was a bomb that quickened my pulsation. I then said: “Perhaps you have got the salt rheum, and I advise you to consult Dr. Plympton immediately.” He said: “I’ll go now, and I want you to go with me.” As Plympton was the Superintendent of my itch, I did not know what response to make. But as he might be absent, or if at home, determined to remain without while Terry went in, I at length said: “Well, I will go with you,” and over we went to the Doctor’s, who, to my great joy, was not in. I then told Terry that I must go to my room, and get my lessons, but that he mast remain until Dr. Plympton returned, and he said he would. Terry rushed into my room in about an hour, a shade paler than a ghost, and exclaimed:—“Branch! the Doctor says that I must have caught the itch from you, as it is precisely like yours.” If a cannon ball had entered the window, it could not have thrilled my frame like the disclosures of Plympton, which I regarded as safe with him as myself. But the old cat was out, and I had to face her sharp claws. So I told poor Terry the whole story, and that if he had not locked the door, and forced me to sleep with him, he would not have caught the itch. He mildly chided me for not disclosing that I had the itch, as, if I had, he certainly would have unlocked the door with much pleasure, and let me out. But he forgave me, and asked me to room with him, so that we could apply the itch ointment together, before the same fire, and talk the matter over, and compare symptoms, and sympathize with each other, and eat and sleep together with impunity, and read distinguished itch authors, and go to Dr. Plympton’s together, until we got cured. I told Terry that if we did all that, we would so thoroughly inocculate each other with the itch, that all the doctors of the globe could not wrench it from our blood, and that we would transmit the itch to our posterity for ten thousand years, and then it would not be entirely out of the system. Terry looked amazed, and said he felt faint, and called for gin and water, and stared like an