"But you Britishers won't try anything, I suppose, from the States, now."
I hastened to assure him I had no prejudice of that sort—if it would cure me, it might come from anywhere.
"You begin with five drops," he said, solemnly. "Or three, if you like, and work up to ten. It soon gets easy to take. You'll soon pick up. But I doubt if you'll get a keg of the crude oil in this country; you'll have to send over for it. I haate to hear anybody cough"—and so we parted.
He was so much in earnest, that if I had egged him on, I verily believe he would have got the keg for me himself. It seemed laughable at the time; but I don't laugh now. I almost think that good-natured American was right; he certainly meant well.
Crude petroleum! Could anything be more nauseous? But probably it acts as a kind of cod-liver oil. Sometimes I wish I had tried it. Like him, I hate to hear anybody cough! Better take a ten-gallon keg of petroleum.
Alere's crude petroleum was the Goliath ale, and he had hardly begun to approach the first hoop, when, as I tell you, he was heard to hum old German songs; it was the volatile principle.
Songs about the Pope and the Sultan
But yet he's not a happy man,
He must obey the Alcoran,
He dares not touch one drop of wine,
I'm glad the Sultan's lot's not mine.
Songs about the rat that dwelt in the cellar, and fed on butter till he raised a paunch that would have done credit to Luther; songs about a King in Thule and the cup his mistress gave him, a beautiful old song that, none like it—
He saw it fall, he watched it fill,
And sink deep, deep into the main;
Then sorrow o'er his eyelids fell,
He never drank a drop again.