I need not say I was surprised. Was it possible, then, that my imagination had done all this business, and that I had been cured by poisons which I supposed were Brandreth’s Pill? I confess I laughed heartily; and told the doctor that, after all, it seemed the counterfeits were as good as the real pills, provided the patient had sufficient faith.
The doctor was puzzled as well as vexed, but an idea struck him that soon enabled him to recover his usual equanimity.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said he, “those Southern druggists have undoubtedly obtained the pills from me under false pretences. They have pretended to be planters, and have purchased pills from me in large quantities for use on the plantations, and then they have retailed the pills from their drug-shops.”
I laughed at this shrewd suggestion, and remarked: “This may be so, but I guess my imagination did the business!”
The doctor was uneasy, but he asked me as a favor to bring him one of the empty pill boxes which I had brought from the South. The next day, I complied with his request, and I will do the doctor justice to say that, on comparison, it proved as he had suspected; the pills were genuine, and although he had advertised that no druggist should sell them, they were so popular that druggists found it necessary to get them “by hook or by crook;” and the consequence was, I had the pleasure of a glorious laugh, and Doctor Brandreth experienced “a great scare.”
The doctor “made his pile” long ago, although he still devotes his personal attention to the “entirely vegetable and innocent pills, whose life-giving power no pen can describe.”
In 1849, the doctor was elected President of the Village of Sing Sing, N. Y. (where he still resides,) and was re-elected to the same office for seven consecutive years. In the same year, he was elected to the New York State Senate, and in 1859 was again elected.
Dr. Brandreth is a liberal man and a pleasant, entertaining, and edifying companion. He deserves all the success he has ever received. “Long may he wave!”