BY A. LIMNER.
It was a standing boast with Mr. Wiseacre that he had never been humbugged in his life. He took the newspapers and read them regularly, and thus got an inkling of the new and strange things that were ever transpiring, or said to be transpiring, in the world. But to all he cried "humbug!" "imposture!" "delusion!" If any one were so bold as to affirm in his presence a belief in the phenomena of Animal Magnetism, for instance, he would laugh outright; then expend upon it all sorts of ridicule, or say that the whole thing was a scandalous trick; and by way of a finale, wind off thus—
"You never humbug me with these new things. Never catch me in gull-traps. I've seen the rise and fall of too many wonders in my time—am too old a bird to be caught with this kind of chaff."
As for Homeopathy, it was treated in a like summary manner. All was humbug and imposture from beginning to end. If you said—
"But, my dear sir, let me relate what I have myself seen—"
He would interrupt you with—
"Oh! as to seeing, you may see any thing, and yet see nothing after all. I've seen the wonders of this new medical science over and over again. There are many extraordinary cures made in imagination. Put a grain of calomel in the Delaware Bay, and salivate a man with a drop of the water! Is not it ridiculous? Doesn't it bear upon the face of it the stamp of absurdity. It's all humbug, sir! All humbug from beginning to end. I know! I've looked into it. I've measured the new wonder, and know its full dimensions—it's name is 'humbug.'"