A doctor at Ashland is also a justice of the peace, and when he is
called to visit a house he don't know whether he is to physic or to
marry. Several times he has been, called out in the night, to the
country, and he supposed some one must be awful sick, and he took a cart
load of medicines, only to find somebody wanted marrying. He has been
fooled so much that when he is called out now he carries a pill-bag and
a copy of the statutes, and tells them to take their choice.
He was called to one house and found a girl who seemed feverish. She was
sitting up in a chair, dressed nicely, but he saw at once that the fatal
flush was on her cheek, and her eyes looked peculiar. He felt of her
pulse, and it was beating at the rate of two hundred a minute. He asked
her to run out her tongue, and she run out eight or nine inches of the
lower end of it. It was covered with a black coating, and he shook his
head and looked sad. She had never been married any before, and supposed
that it was necessary for a justice who was going to marry a couple to
know all about their physical condition, so she kept quiet and answered
questions.
She did not tell him that she had been eating huckleberry pie, so he
laid the coating on her tongue to some disease that was undermining her
constitution. He put his ear on her chest and listened to the beating of
her heart, and shook his head again.
He asked her if she had been exposed to any contagious disease. She
didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that
he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two
evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he
had been chopping, and she had to sit up with him.
The doctor got out his pill-bags and made some quinine powders, and gave
her some medicine in two tumblers, to be taken alternately, and told her
to soak her feet and go to bed, and put a hot mustard poultice on her
chest, and some onions around her neck.
She was mad, and flared right up, and said she wasn't very well posted,
and lived in the country, but if she knew her own heart she would not
play such a trick as that on a new husband.
The doctor got mad, and asked her if she thought he didn't understand
his business; and he was about to go and let her die, when the
bridegroom came in and told him to go ahead with the marrying. The doc
said that altered the case. He said next time he came he should know
what to bring, and then she blushed, and told him he was an old fool
anyway, but he pronounced them man and wife, and said the prescription
would be five dollars, the same as though there had been somebody sick.
But the doc had cheek. Just as he was leaving he asked the bridegroom
if he didn't want to ride up to Ashland with him, it was only eighteen
miles, and the ride would be lonesome, but the bride said not if the
court knew herself, and the bridegroom said now he was there he guessed
he would stay. He said he didn't care much about going to Ashland
anyway.