When the Post Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of
customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he
might escape, but the barber's eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itself
upon him.
"You're next," he said, with a look of diabolical malevolence, and the
Post Man sank into a hard chair nailed to the wall, with a feeling of
hopeless despair.
In a few moments there was a rattle and a bang, the customer in the
chair was thrown violently on his feet, and fled out of the shop
pursued by the African who was making vicious dabs at him with a whisk
broom full of tacks and splinters.
The Post Man took a long look at the sunlight, pinned a little note to
his tie with his scarf pin, giving his address, in case the worst
should happen, and settled into the chair.
He informed the barber, in answer to a stern inquiry, that he did not
want his hair cut, and in turn received a look of cold incredulity and
contempt.
The chair was hurled to a reclining position, the lather was mixed,
and as the deadly brush successively stopped all sense of hearing,
sight and smell, the Post Man sank into a state of collapse, from which
he was aroused by the loud noise of a steel instrument with which the barber was scraping off the lather and wiping it on the Post Man's shirt sleeve.
"Everybody's riding bicycles now," said the barber, "and it's going to
be very difficult for the fashionable people to keep it an exclusive
exercise. You see, you can't prevent anybody from riding a bicycle
that wants to, and the streets are free for everyone. I don't see any
harm in the sport, myself, and it's getting more popular every day.
After a while, riding will become so general that a lady on a wheel
will not create any more notice than she would walking. It's good
exercise for the ladies, and that makes up for their looking like a
bag full of fighting cats slung over a clothes line when they ride.
"But the pains they do take to make themselves mannish! Why can't a
lady go in for athletics without trying to look and dress tough? If I
should tell you what one of them did the other day you wouldn't
believe it."
The barber here glared so fiercely at the Post Man that he struggled
up to the top of the lather by a superhuman effort and assured the
artist that anything he said would be received with implicit faith.
"I was sent for," continued the barber, "to go up on McKinney Avenue
and was to bring my razor and shaving outfit. I went up and found the
house.
"A good-looking young lady was riding a bicycle up and down in front
of the gate. She had on a short skirt, leggings, and a sack coat, cut
like a man's.
"I went in and knocked and they showed me into a side room. In a few
minutes the young lady came in, sat down on a chair and an old lady
whom I took to be her ma dropped in.
"'Shave,' said the young lady. 'Twice over, and be in a hurry; I've an
engagement.'
"I was nearly knocked down with surprise, but I managed to get my
outfit in shape. It was evident that that young lady ruled the house.
The old lady said to me in a whisper that her daughter was one of the
leaders among the girls who believed in the emancipation of women, and
she had resolved to raise a moustache and thus get ahead of her young
lady companions.
"The young lady leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
"I dipped my brush in the lather and ran it across her upper lip. As
soon as I did so she sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing with rage.
"'How dare you insult me!' she stormed, looking as if she would like
to eat me up. 'Leave the house, immediately,' she went on.
"I was dumbfounded. I thought perhaps she was a trifle flighty, so I
put up my utensils and started for the door. When I got there, I
recovered my presence of mind enough to say:
"Miss, I am sure I have done nothing to offend you. I always try to
act a gentleman whenever it is convenient. In what way have I insulted
you?
"'Take your departure,' she said angrily. 'I guess I know when a man
kisses me.'
"And so I left. Now, what do you think of that?" asked the barber, as
he pushed about an ounce of soap into the Post Man's mouth with his
thumb.
"I think that's a pretty tough story to believe," said the Post Man,
summoning up his courage.
The barber stopped shaving and bent a gaze of such malignant and cool
ferocity upon his victim that the Post Man hastened to say:
"But no doubt it occurred as you have stated."
"It did," said the barber. "I don't ask you to take my word for it. I
can prove it. Do you see that blue mug on the shelf, the third from
the right? Well, that's the mug I carried with me that day. I guess
you'll believe it now."
"Speaking of bald heads," went on the barber, although no one had said
a word about bald heads, "reminds me of how a man worked a game on me
once right here in Houston. You know there's nothing in the world that
will make hair grow on a bald head. Lots of things are sold for that
purpose, but if the roots are dead nothing can bring them to life. A
man came into my shop one day last fall and had a shave. His head was
as bald and smooth as a tea cup. All the tonics in the world couldn't
have started one hair growing there. The man was a stranger to me, but
said he ran a truck garden out on the edge of town. He came in about
three times and got shaved and then he struck me to fix him up
something to make his hair grow."
The barber here reached back upon a shelf and got a strip of sticking
plaster. Then he cut a gash along the Post Man's chin and stuck the
plaster over it.
"When a man asks for a hair tonic," continued the barber, "in a
barbershop he always gets it. You can fix up a mixture that a man may
use on his head for a long time before he finds it is doing him no
good. In the meantime he continues to shave in your shop.
"I told my customer that I had invented a hair tonic that if its use
were persisted in would certainly cause the hair to grow on the
smoothest head. I sat down and wrote him out a formula and told him to
have it prepared at a drug store and not to give away the information,
as I intended after a while to have it patented and sell it on a large
scale. The recipe contained a lot of harmless stuff, some salts of
tartar, oil of almonds, bay rum, rose water, tincture of myrrh and
some other ingredients. I wrote them down at random just as they came
into my head, and half an hour afterwards I couldn't have told what it
was composed of myself. The man took it, paid me a dollar for the
formula and went off to get it filled at a drug store.
"He came back twice that week to get shaved, and he said he was using
it faithfully. Then he didn't come any more for about two weeks. He
dropped in one afternoon and hung his hat up, and it nearly knocked me
down when I saw that the finest kind of a suit of hair had started on
his head. It was growing splendidly, and only two weeks before his
head had been as bald as a door knob.
"He said he was awfully pleased with my tonic, and well he might be.
While I was shaving him I tried to think what the ingredients were
that I had written down for him to use, but I couldn't remember the
quantities or half the things I had used. I knew that I had
accidentally struck upon a tonic that would make the hair grow, and I
knew furthermore that that formula was worth a million dollars to any
man if it would do the work. Making hair grow on bald heads, if it
could be done, would be better than any gold mine ever worked. I made
up my mind to have that formula. When he was about to start away I
said carelessly:
"'By the way, Mr. Plunket, I have mislaid my memorandum book that has
the formula of my tonic in it and I want to have a bottle or two
prepared this morning. If you have the one I gave you I'd like to make
a copy of it while you are here.'
"I must have looked too anxious, for he looked at me for a few minutes
and then broke out into a laugh.
"'By Jiminy,' he said, 'I don't believe you've got a copy of it
anywheres. I believe you just happend to hit on the right thing and
you don't remember what it was. I ain't half as green as I look. That
hair grower is worth a fortune, and a big one, too. I think I'll just
keep my recipe and get somebody to put the stuff up and sell it.'
"He started out, and I called him into the back room and talked to him
half an hour.
"I finally made a trade with him and bought the formula back for $250
cash. I went up to the bank and got the money which I had there saving
up to build a house. He then gave me back the recipe I had given him
and signed a paper relinquishing all rights to it. He also agreed to
sign a testimonial about the stuff having made his hair grow out in
two weeks."
The barber began to look gloomy and ran his fingers inside the Post
Man's shirt collar, tearing out the button hole, and the collar button
flew out the door across the sidewalk into the gutter.
"I went to work next day," said the barber, "and filed application at
Washington for a patent on my tonic and arranged with a big drug firm
in Houston to put it on the market for me. I had a million dollars in
sight. I fixed up a room where I mixed the tonic--for I wouldn't let
the druggists or anybody else know what was in it--and then the
druggists bottled and labeled it.
"I quit working in the shop and put all my time into my tonic.
"Mr. Plunket came into the shop once or twice within the next two
weeks and his hair was still growing finely. Pretty soon I had about
$200 worth of the tonic ready for the market, and Mr. Plunket was to
come in town on Saturday and give me his testimonial to print on
advertising dodgers and circulars with which I was going to flood the
country.
"I was waiting in the room where I mixed my tonic about 11 o'clock
Saturday when the door opened and Mr. Plunket came in. He was very
much excited and very angry.
"'Look here,' he cried, 'what's the matter with your infernal stuff?'
"He pulled off his hat, and his head was as shiny and bare as a china
egg.
"'It all came out,' he said roughly. 'It was growing all right until
yesterday morning, when it commenced to fall out, and this morning
there wasn't a hair left.'
"I examined his head and there wasn't the ghost of a hair to be found
anywhere.
"'What's the good of your stuff," he asked angrily, 'if it makes your
hair grow and then all fall out again?'
"'For heaven's sake, Mr. Plunket,' I said, 'don't say anything about
it or you'll ruin me. I've got every cent I've got in the world
invested in this hair tonic, and I've got to get my money back. It
made your hair grow, give me the testimonial and let me sell what I've
got put up, anyway. You are $250 ahead on it and you ought to help me
out of it.'
"He was very mad and cut up quite roughly and said he had been
swindled and would expose the tonic as a fraud and a lot of things
like that. Finally he agreed that if I would pay him $100 more he
would give me the testimonial to the effect that the tonic had made
his hair grow and say nothing about its having fallen out again. If I
could sell what I had put up at $1.00 per bottle I would come out
about even.
"I went out and borrowed the money and paid it to him and he signed
the testimonial and left."
* * * * *
"Did you sell your tonic out?" asked the Post Man, trying to speak in
a tone calculated not to give offense.
The barber gave him a look of derisive contempt and then said in a
tone of the utmost sarcasm:
"Oh, yes, I sold it out. I sold exactly five bottles, and the
purchasers, after using the mixture faithfully for a month, came back
and demanded their money. Not one of them that used it ever had a new
hair to start on his head."
"How do you account for its having made the hair grow on Mr. Plunket's
head?" asked the Post Man.
"How do I account for it?" repeated the barber in so dangerous a tone
that the Post Man shuddered. "How do I account for it? I'll tell you
how I account for it. I went out one day to where Mr. Plunket lived on
the edge of town and asked for him.
"'Which Mr. Plunket?' asked a man who came out to the gate?
"'Come off,' I said, 'the Plunket that lives here.'
"'They've both moved,' said the man.
"'What do you mean by "both?"' I said, and then I began to think, and
I said to the man:
"'What kind of looking men were the Plunkets?'
"'As much like as two peas,' said the man. 'They were twins, and
nobody could tell 'em apart from their faces or their talk. The only
difference between 'em was that one of 'em was as bald-headed as a hen
egg and the other had plenty of hair.'"
"Now," said the barber as he poured about two ounces of bay rum down
the Post Man's shirt front, "that's how I account for it. The
bald-headed Plunket would come in my shop one time and the one with
hair would come in another, and I never knew the difference."
When the barber finished the Post Man saw the African with the whisk
broom waiting for him near the front door, so he fled by the back
entrance, climbed a brick wall and escaped by a side street.
(_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, June 7, 1896.)