SECOND INTERVIEW.
Patient—Good morning, Doctor.
Doctor—How do you do?
Patient—I am so weak I can hardly stand.
Doctor—It must be owing to the warm weather.
Patient—No it ain’t. I have been reading Branch’s Alligator, and I have got the dysentery so bad that I fear I shall lose my entrails and die before sundown, if you don’t give me something to stop it. Why, lord bless your dear soul, Doctor, I was up all last night, and have been out ten times to-day. O do relieve and save me, Doctor. Only give me back my piles and dyspepsia again, and I’ll be satisfied. The dysentery is more dangerous than either, and I’m not prepared to die. I joined the Church at the time Awful Gardner and Ex-Alderman Wesley Smith did, but I didn’t hold on, and I am worse now than I was before I joined the Old Dutch Church in Fulton street. Do save me, Doctor, do. O do! All this trouble has come upon me, because you told me to read Branch’s Alligator, which made me laugh so, that my bowels got under way, and I couldn’t stop them. Do save me, dear Doctor.
Doctor—Do you ever read the Herald, Times, or Tribune?
Patient—No. I consider it a sin to read those papers.
Doctor—Why?
Patient—Because they lie and black mail so, and deceive and sell the people, and plunder them, and erect such elegant buildings with their plunder. They never could make so much money by honorable industry.
Doctor—Well, now, you go and buy a copy of the Herald, Times, and Tribune, and go home and read the editorials, and the letters of their Albany and Washington correspondents, and their mercenary Wall street money articles, and read their billingsgate of each other, and their horrible black mail articles, and they will so thrill your blood, as to produce an instant reaction, and you will soon be more costive than before you read Branch’s Alligator.
Patient—I’ll do it. How much shall I pay you for your advice?
Doctor—Not a cent.
Patient—You are too generous, Doctor.
Doctor—Not at all. Those editors ain’t worth a cent, only what they steal from the government, and the politicians, and the people. They don’t make a millionth as much on their paper and advertisements, as they do on black mail. They are the source of all governmental evil.
Patient—Them’s my sentiments exactly. Good morning. Doctor.
Doctor—Good morning, patient. [Exeunt.]