"No, sir," says Borax; "your case was a dangerous case—I never raised a man from the grave with such difficulty, in all my practice!"
"But, fifty-three calls, doctor, one hundred and six dollars."
"Exactly—two dollars a visit, sir," said the urbane doctor.
"And twenty-seven prescriptions, four plasters, &c.—eighty-one dollars!"
"One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, sir."
"Well," says Cauliflower, "this may be all very well for people who can af-ford it, but I can't; there's your money, doctor, but I'll bet you won't catch me sick as that again—soon!"
The Race of the Aldermen.
In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect were a sort of tie; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy. They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed their favors among their partizans accordingly. The whigs at length tied them, and the locos, beholding with horror and misgivings, the new order of things which was destined to turn out many a holder of fat office, many a pat-riot overflowing with democratic patriotism, whose devotion to the cause of the country was manifest in the tenacity with which he clung to his place, were extremely anxious to devise ways and means to keep the whigs at bay; and as the day drew near, when the assembled Board of Aldermen should have their sitting at the City Hall, various dodges were proposed by the locos to out-vote the whigs, in questions or decisions touching the distribution of places, and appointment of men to fill the various stations of the new municipal government.
"I have it—I've got it!" exclaimed a round and jolly alderman of a democratic ward. "To-night the Board meets—we stand about eight and eight—this afternoon, let two of us invite two of the whigs, Alderman H—— and Alderman J——, out to a dinner at Harlem, get H—— and J—— tight as wax, and then we can slip off, take our conveyance, come in, and vote the infernal whigs just where we want them!"