There was a great deal of humor about the doctor, and he was sometimes inclined to be a trifle revengeful. Here is a case in point:
There was occasionally a town which, work at answer to our appeals, but the surrounding county try as we might, would absolutely refuse to do business. Why this was so, was more than I can explain. We probably tried harder there than elsewhere, but some how the conditions were not right. I remember once in our travels we hit such a town, and not only did the town refuse to try was just as bad. We could not even leave a gratuitous bottle of “Pain Balm” on free trial.
Before long we caught on to the fact that from the flashy appearance of the wagon the farmers believed it belonged to the circus we had noticed was advertised to appear at the town the following week. The doctor made up his mind that that was the reason. In the moral mind the circus man is credited with surpassing shrewdness in all business matters.
For the moment the doctor was mad enough, but he quickly cooled down and determined to play a little trick on them in return. He quit trying to sell goods, and became a buyer. The fields were fairly stocked with turnips and he told every farmer he could meet that he was purchasing agent for the circus, representing that he was out contracting for turnips to feed the elephants. I am afraid to say how many wagon-loads it took daily to supply the needs of the show, but he offered enormous prices for turnips by the wagon-load to be delivered at the show grounds on the day of the circus.
We never knew the exact outcome, but many a laugh did we have imagining it. The loads of turnips hauled into town that day must have been a caution, even if not more than half the farmers fulfilled their contracts. Of course, the circus people would not take the vegetables; but I afterwards heard that the manager, seeing a chance for a big local gag and advertisement, kindly took them all into the big tent and seated them together in the reserved corner, where the clown could point them out when he told the great joke of the farmers, the elephants and the turnips.
But if those medicine men had showed their faces again in that neighborhood I think the farmers would have killed them, and torn their bodies into fragments as small as turnip seeds.
CHAPTER IX.
Side Lines and Schemes of Various Kinds—The Glass Pen—Pie Scheme Choked Off—Selling Notions from Wagon—Fighting the Railroad Bonds—Forced to Leave Town—Legislated Out of Business—A Warning and the Escape—The Accident—The Penny Raffling Scheme.