But what tales did I not hear of restaurants, saloons, theatres, and other resorts of pleasure visited, and what veiled hints were not cast forth of secret pleasures indulged in—flirtations, if not more vigorous escapades. Life was such a phantasm of delight to me then. Nameless and formless pleasures danced constantly before my eyes. Principally, not quite entirely, they were connected with the beauty of girls, though money and privilege and future success were other forms. And there were a few youths and some girls in Warsaw, who to my inexperienced judgment, possessed nearly all that life had to offer!
At this late date, however, Fort Wayne, looking at it in the cold, practical light of a middle-aged automobile tourist, offered but few titillations, either reminiscent or otherwise. Here it was, to me, sacred ground, and here had these various things occurred, yet as I viewed it now it seemed a rather dull, middle West town, with scarcely anything save a brisk commerce to commend it. Abroad one finds many cities of the same size of great interest, historically and architecturally—but here! By night and day it seemed bright enough, and decidedly clean. All that I could think of as Franklin and I drifted about it on this first night was that it was a very humble copy of every other larger American city in all that it attempted—streets, cabarets, high buildings and so on. Every small city in America desires to be like Chicago or New York or both, to reproduce what is built and done in these places—the most obvious things, I mean.
After dining at a cabaret Hofbräu House and sleeping in a very comfortable room which admitted the clangor of endless street car bells, however, I awoke next morning with a sick stomach and a jaded interest in all material things, and I had neither eaten nor drunk much of anything the night before—truly, truly! We had sought out the principal resort and sat in it as a resource against greater boredom, nothing more. And now, being without appetite, I wandered forth to the nearest drug store to have put up the best remedy I know for a sick stomach—nux vomica and gentian, whatever that may be.
It was in this drug store that the one interesting thing in Fort Wayne occurred—at least to me. There were, as it was still early, a negro sweeping the place, and one clerk, a lean apothecary with roached and pointed hair, who was concealed in some rear room. He came forward after a time, took my prescription, and told me I would have to wait ten minutes. Later another man hobbled in, a creature who looked like the “before” picture of a country newspaper patent medicine advertisement. He was so gaunt and blue and sunken-seamed as to face that he rather frightened me, as if a corpse should walk into your room and begin to look around. His clothes were old and brown and looked as though they had been worn heaven knows what length of time. The clerk came out, and he asked for something the name of which I did not catch. Presently the clerk came back with his prescription and mine, and going to him and putting down a bottle and a box of pills, said of the former, holding it up, “Now this is for your blood. You understand, do you? You take this three times a day, every day until it is gone.” The sick man nodded like an automaton. “And these”—he now held up the pills—"are for your bowels. You take two o' these every night."
“This is for my blood and these are for my bowels,” said the man slowly.
The nostrums were wrapped up very neatly in grey paper, and tied with a pink string. The corpse extracted out of a worn leather book sixtyfive cents in small pieces, and put them down. Then he shuffled slowly out.
“What ails him, do you suppose?” I asked of the dapper, beau-like clerk.
“Oh, chronic anæmia. He can’t live long.”
“Will that medicine do him any good, do you think?”
“Not a bit. He can’t live. He’s[He’s] all worn out. But he goes to some doctor around here and gets a prescription and we have to fill it. If we didn’t, someone else would.”