A GOOD RECOMMENDATION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 508, 12 January 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

A GOOD RECOMMENDATION.

A Yankee manufacturer and vendor of quack medicine for rheumatism and the growth of hair combined recently wrote to a friend, asking for a recommendation of his (the manufacturer’s) “ balsam." In a few days he received the following, which we call pretty strong :—“ Dear Sir, ■ -The land composing this farm lias hitherto been so poor that a Chinaman could not get a living off it, and so stony that we had to slice our potatoes and plant them edgeways, but, hearing of your balsam, I put some on tho corner of a tenacre field, surrounded by a rail fence, and in the morning I found the stones had entirely disappeared, and a neat wall encircled the field ; the rails were split up into firewood, and piled up symmetrically in my hack yard. I put half an ounce in tho middle of a hncklehury swamp : in two days it was cleared off, planted with corn and pumkpins, and a row of peach trees in full blossom through the middle. As an evidence of its tremendous strength, I may say that it drew a striking likeness of my eldest son out of a mill pond : drew a blister all over his stomach ; drew a load of potatoes four miles to market; drew grease out of a flint; and eventually drew a prize of ninety-seven dollars out of a defunct lottery.”