In this humble eyrie I could fancy Wattles communing with the stars on quiet nights, listening to their spiritual voices, gazing with apprehension upon the hovering malefics, and searching the immutable heavens for the missing orb of his horoscope.
Like the Chaldeans of old upon their lonely watch towers in the dawn of history, he contemplated the bejewelled scroll, and beheld the endless processions of mighty planets that, in his belief, cycled through infinity to fashion minute destinies on the distant speck of earth. The flying shuttling spheres were weaving the mottled fabrics of the fates of men, and, among them was the frail and ill-starred web of Wattles. After all, was he of less consideration than all the others who assume the creation of the universe to be a vast design for the final glory of humanity?
We descended from the platform, and Wattles conducted me to his “labertory,” a small room at the rear of the house.
Several large kettles were scattered about, and, on a low platform was a large alembic. A big stove stood near the chimney. Stacked along the shelves were baskets of dried leaves, flowers and berries, piles of various herbs, bundles of wild cherry and wahoo bark, and bags of flag and snake roots.
The tom cat Scorpio had followed us and he sniffed suspiciously around a barrel in the corner, in which there were probably mouse nests.
“This is where I make them celebrated Wahoo Bitters,” Wattles announced proudly, as he pointed to a row of filled bottles on one of the shelves. “I got the formula from Waukena, the old Injun squaw that used to live up in Whippoorwill Bayou. All the Injuns used to take it when they got sick, but they didn’t ’ave such improved ways of makin’ it as I got. They used to drop red hot stones in with the things its made of, and I think that killed part o’ the edge the bitters ought to have on ’em when they’re done. They didn’t know how to combine certain chemical diffusions and decant ’em off the way I do. I sell a good deal o’ them bitters around ’ere. Posey keeps ’em at the store an’ there’s lots of other places where they have ’em in the stores.”
We left the “labertory” and I heard the sound of a swift scrape along the floor. I inferred that Scorpio had made a seizure.
Wattles kindly asked me to have some lunch with him. It was more of a “feed” than a repast. Late in the afternoon I finished my rather prolonged but interesting visit.
Wattles wanted to show me his garden, and we walked out into the clearing along the edge of a deep ravine back of the house. Some of the vegetables in the garden had struggled hard for existence.
“Look at them beets!” he exclaimed ruefully. “I planted ’em under exactly proper lunar aspects and I ain’t got a damn beet in the patch.”