[Dr. S., a quack living in Winsted, Conn., once said to an educated physician, that he sometimes found difficulty in introducing a female catheter on account of the “prostrate” (meaning prostate) gland,—which exists only in the male!]
I saw him once after the above interesting interview. He entered the drug house of Rust, Bird, & Brother, Boston, just as I was about to go out. I could not refrain from turning my attention towards him, as I recognized his stentorian voice.
“Have you got any Bonyset arbs?” was all I waited to hear. I subsequently learned that he was known in Vermont and part of New York State by the sobriquet of “Dr. Pusbelly.”
The following story respecting “Dr. Pusbelly,” related in my hearing by a stage-driver, is in perfect keeping with the character of the man, as he impressed me in my first interview at the country hotel.
Dr. Pusbelly.
One sunny day in autumn I had occasion to take a long journey “away down in Maine,” when and where there was no railroad. I was seated on the outside of a four-horse stage-coach, with three or four other passengers, one of whom was a lady, who preferred riding in that elevated station to being cramped up inside the coach with eight persons, besides sundry babies, a poodle dog, and a parrot.
“Sam,” our driver, was a sociable fellow, full of pleasant stories,—and Medford rum, though he was considered a perfectly safe Jehu. The greatest drawback to his otherwise agreeable yarns was his habit of swearing. Notwithstanding the presence of the lady, he would occasionally round his periods and emphasize his sentences with an expletive which had better have been omitted.
“Can’t you tell a story just as well without swearing, Sam?” I inquired.
“O, no; it comes second natur. Why, cap’n, everybody swears sometimes. And that reminds me—Git up, Jerry” (to the horse). “There was an old doctor, Pill—Pilgarlic, I called him, on account of his pills, and the strong effluvia from his cataract mouth. He was up round Champlain, where I drove before the d—d railroads ruined the great stage business. Well, he was as religious as a cuss,—that ain’t swearin’, is it, cap’n? Well, he came round there pill-peddling, you see, and in order to make the old women believe in his (expletive) medicines—”
“Don’t swear, Sam. You can tell the story better without. Come, try,” interrupted a passenger, with a twinkle of fun in his expressive eyes.