Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot

by Charles Heber Clark

It is not at all unlikely that Perkins would have achieved success with his enterprise but for one unfortunate circumstance: he was totally unfamiliar with the preparations, excepting in so far as the pharmacopoeia instructed him; and as ill-luck would have it, in putting them up he got the labels of the liver regulator on the hair vigor bottles, and the labels of the latter on the bottles containing the former. Of course the results were appalling; and as Doctor Perkins had requested the afflicted to inform him of the benefits derived from applying the remedies, he had not sold more than a few hundred bottles before he began to hear from the purchasers.

One day, as he was coming out of his office, he observed a man sitting on the fire-plug with a shotgun in his hand and thunder upon his brow. The man was bare-headed, and his scalp was covered with a shiny substance of some kind. When he saw Perkins, he emptied one load of bird-shot into the inventor's legs, and he was about to give him the contents of the other barrel, when Perkins hobbled into the office and shut the door. The man pursued him and tried to break in the door with the butt of the gun. He failed, and Perkins asked him what he meant by such murderous conduct.

"You come out here, and I'll show you what I mean, you scoundrel!" said the man. "You step out here for a minute, and I'll blow the head off of you for selling me hair vigor that has gummed my head up so that I can't wear a hat and can't sleep without sticking to the pillow-case. Turned my scalp all green and pink, too. You put your head out of that door, and I'll give you more vigor than you want, you idiot! I expect that stuff'll soak in and kill me."

Then the man took his seat again on the fire-plug, and after reloading the barrel of his gun put on a fresh cap and waited. Perkins remained inside and sent a boy out the back way for the mail. The first letter he opened was from a woman, who wrote:

"My husband took one dose of your liver regulator and immediately went into spasms. He has had fits every hour for four days. As soon as he dies I am coming on to kill the fiend who poisoned him."

A clergyman in Delaware wrote to ask what were the ingredients of the liver regulator. He feared something was wrong, because his aunt had taken the medicine only twice, when she began to roll over on the floor and howl in the most alarming manner, and she had been in a comatose condition for fifteen hours.

A man named Johnson dropped a line to say that after applying the hair vigor to his scalp he had leaned his head against the back of a chair, and it had now been in that position two days. He feared he would never be released unless he cut up the chair and wore the piece permanently on his head. He was coming to see Perkins in reference to the matter when he got loose, and he was going to bring his dog with him.

A Mr. Wilson said that his boy had put some of the vigor on his face in order to induce the growth of a moustache, and that at the present moment the boy's upper lip was glued fast to the tip of his nose and his countenance looked as if it had been coated with green varnish.

There were about forty other letters, giving the details of sundry other cases of awful suffering and breathing threatenings and slaughter against Mr. Perkins. Just as Mr. Perkins was finishing these epistles a friend of his came rushing in through the back door breathless, and exclaimed,

"By George, Aleck, you better get over the fence and leave town as quick as you can. There's thunder to pay about those patent medicines of yours. Old Mrs. Gridley's just gone up on that liver regulator, after being in convulsions for a week. Thompson's hired girl is lying at the last gasp, four of the Browns have got the awfulest-looking heads you ever saw from the hair vigor, and about a dozen other people are up at the sheriff's office taking out warrants for your arrest. The people are talking of mobbing you, and the crowd out here on the pavement are cheering a green-headed man with a gun who says he's going to bang the head off of you. Now, you take my advice and skip. It'll be sudden death to stay here. Leave! that's your only chance."