just as the enraged official was about to floor him with a hymn-book.

[Illustration: SIMPSON'S CASE]

But the doctor did not succeed with private practice in Millburg,
and so one day he made up his mind to try to get out of poverty by
inventing a patent medicine. After some reflection he concluded that
the two most frequent and most unpopular forms of infirmity were
baldness of head and torpidity of the liver, and he selected compounds
recommended by the pharmacopoeia as the remedies which he would sell
to the public. One he called "Perkins' Hair Vigor," and the other
"Perkins' Liver Regulator." Procuring a large number of fancy bottles
and gaudy labels, he bottled the medicines and advertised them
extensively, with certificates of imaginary cures, which were written
out for him by a friend whose liver was active and whose hair was
abundant.

It is not at all unlikely that Perkins would have achieved success
with his enterprise but for one unfortunate circumstance: he was
totally unfamiliar with the preparations, excepting in so far as
the pharmacopoeia instructed him; and as ill-luck would have it, in
putting them up he got the labels of the liver regulator on the hair
vigor bottles, and the labels of the latter on the bottles containing
the former. Of course the results were appalling; and as Doctor
Perkins had requested the afflicted to inform him of the benefits
derived from applying the remedies, he had not sold more than a few
hundred bottles before he began to hear from the purchasers.

One day, as he was coming out of his office, he observed a man sitting
on the fire-plug with a shotgun in his hand and thunder upon his