It requires no extraordinary shrewdness in a person of capable
intelligence to expose a pretender,--especially a quack, who appears in
the "borrowed feathers" of assumed learning. Lawyers have so much of
this stripping work to do that it forms their cheapest fun; but it is
fun, nevertheless. The Louisville _Courier-Journal_ says:
Judge Black, of Pennsylvania, tells a comical story of a trial in which
a German doctor appeared for the defence in a case for damages brought
against a client of his by the object of his assault.
The eminent jurist soon recognized in his witness, who was produced as a
medical expert, a laboring man who some years before, and in another
part of the country, had been engaged by him as a builder of post and
rail fences. With this cue he opened his examination. "You say, doctor,"
he began, with great diffidence and suavity, "that you operated upon Mr.
------'s head after it was cut by Mr. ------?"
"Oh, yaw," replied the ex-fence builder; "me do dat; yaw, yaw."
"Was the wound a very severe one, doctor?"
"Enough to kill him if I not save his life."
"Well, doctor, what did you do for him?"
"Everything."
"Did you perform the Caesarean operation?"
"Oh, yaw, yaw; if me not do dat he die."
"Did you decapitate him?"
"Yaw, yaw, me do dat, too."
"Did you hold a _post mortem_ examination?"
"Oh, to be schure, Schudge! Me always do dat."
"Well, now, doctor," and here the judge bent over in a friendly,
familiar way, "tell us whether you submitted your patient to the process
known among medical men as the _post and rail fenciorum?"_
The mock doctor drew himself up indignantly. "Scherry Plack," says he,
"I always know'd you vas a jayhawk lawyer, an' now I know you for a mean
man!"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Oil and Vinegar. -- "Remember," said a trading Quaker to his son, "in
making thy way in the world, a spoonful of oil will go farther than a
quart of vinegar."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Illustration (children-corner) CHILDREN'S COLUMN]
For the Companion.