“Why,” says Farnum, “there ’tis agin, squire; it’s nater—it’s clear nater. I never went to college, but I had a providential insight into things from my childhood. Now, here’s my but’nut physic—it’s true, an Indian give me the fust notion on’t; but I brought it to perfection, from my own study into nater. Now, all them doctors’ stuffs that you git at the pottekary’s, is nothin’ but pizen; thur’s no nater in’t. My physic is all yarbs—every mite on’t. I can cure a man, woman, or child, jest as sure as a cat’ll lick butter! There’s no mistake.”
“Well, how did you find it out, doctor?” said my uncle, seeming anxious to give him an opportunity to unfold his wisdom.
“Can you tell why a duck takes to water?” said Farnum, with a look of conscious importance. “It’s because it’s in him. ’Twas jest so with me. I had a nateral instinct that telled me that there was something very mysterious in the number seven. I expect I got some on’t from the scriptur’, for there’s a great deal there about it. Well, one dark, rainy night, as I was goin’ along thro’ some woods, thinkin’ about somethin’ or other, I came to a bridge over a river. The wind was blowin’ desput hard, and it seemed to go through me like a hetchel through a hand of flax. I stood there a minit, and then I looked down into the dark water, wolloping along; and, thinks I, it’s all exactly like human nater. Well, now, if you’ll believe me, jest as that are thought crossed my mind, I heerd a hoot-owl in the woods. He hooted jest seven times, and then he stopped. Then he hooted seven times more, and so kept goin’ on, till he’d hooted jest forty-nine times. Now, thinks I to myself, this must mean somethin’, but I couldn’t tell what. I went home, but I didn’t sleep any. The next day I couldn’t eat anything, and, in fact, I grew as thin as a June shad. All the time I was thinkin’ of the bridge, and the wind whistlin’, and the river, and the dark rollin’ water, and the hoot-owl that spoke to me seven times seven times.
“Well, now, there was an Indian in the place, who was famous for curin’ all sorts of diseases with yarbs. I went to see him one day, and tell’d him I was sick. He ax’d me what was the matter, and I related the story of the owl. ‘You are the man I have been seeking for,’ said he. ‘The spirit of the night has told me that I shall soon die; and he has commanded me to give my secret to one that shall be sent. In seven weeks from the time that you were at the bridge, meet me there at midnight.’
“True to the appointment, I went to the bridge. It was a rainy night agin, and agin the wind howled over the bridge—agin the owl was there, and agin he lifted up his voice forty-nine times. At that moment I saw the dark Indian come upon the bridge. He then told me his secret. ‘Man,’ said he, ‘is subject to seven times seven diseases; and there are seven times seven plants made for their cure. Go, seek, and you shall find!’ Saying this, the dark figure leaped over the bridge, and disappeared in the waters. I stood and heerd a gurgling and choking sound, and saw somethin’ strugglin’ in the stream; but the Indian disappeared, and I have never seen him sence. I went from the place, and I soon found the forty-nine yarbs, and of these I make my pills. Each pill has seven times seven ingredients in it; though but’nut’s the chief, and that’s why it’s called but’nut physic. You may give it in any disease, and the cure for ’tis there. I’ve tried it in nine hundred and thirty-seven cases, and it haint failed but six times, and that, I reckon, was for want of faith. Here’s some of the pills; there’s forty-nine in a box, and the price is a dollar.”
Such was the doctor’s marvellous tale, and every word of it was no doubt a fiction.
It may seem strange that such an impostor as this should succeed; but, for some reason or other, mankind love to be cheated by quacks. This is the only reason I can assign for the fact, that Dr. Farnum sold six boxes of his pills before he left the tavern, and one of them to my uncle. The next day he insisted upon my taking seven of them, and, at his urgent request, I complied. The result was, that I was taken violently ill, and was again confined to my room for a fortnight. At length I recovered, and my uncle insisted that if I had not taken the pills, I should have had a much worse turn; and, therefore, it was regarded as a remarkable proof of the efficacy of Farnum’s pills. Some two or three years after, I saw my own name in the doctor’s advertisement, among a list of persons who had been cured in a wonderful manner, by the physic of the butter-nut doctor.
I have thought it worth while to note these incidents, because they amused me much at the time, and proved a lesson to me through life—which I commend to all my readers—and that is, never to place the slightest confidence in a quack.
The Apple; a German Fable.
There lived a rich man at the court of King Herod. He was lord chamberlain, and clothed himself in purple and costly linen, and lived every day in magnificence and joy. Then there came to him, from a distant country, a friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for many years.