A BAD BOY AND HIS AUNT.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 770, 8 December 1876, Page 3

A BAD BOY AND HIS AUNT.

(Danbury News) A maiden lady with more years on her head than there are sound teeth in her mouth, came to Lynn, last July, from the West, to spend a few weeks with a sister living on Baltimore street. She came to ascertain what effect sea bathing would have upon her shattered constitution. Taking up a paper shortly after her arrival, her attention was attracted to the advertisement of Brown, the Summer street druggist, setting forth the wonderful cures effected by his Ameaine. That night she dreamed three times that she was a well woman, strong and robust, all through taking two bottles of the above-named specific. Next morning she was up before ten o’clock and off for Brown's, taking with her a son of the family, who is somewhat famous for his jokes, and who has no more respect for old age and weak limbs than he has for a yellow dog. In order to keep within sight of the boy, she had to hurry, so that when they reached the apothecary’s the poor woman was so exhausted that it was some ten minutes before she could make known her business Among the numerous ailments of the out-of-towu lady is a deafness in the left ear, while the other part of her head is totally paralised, so she had to carry an ear trumpet, without which she could not distinguish an earthquake from a fire-cracker if it weren’t for the jar. ‘ Will you please pass me a fan ? ’ she said, faintly, to the clerk, after becoming sufficiently rested to speak. ‘ Fan ! ’tain’t a fan that you wan’, said the boy, jumping up and down like a churn- dasher and making queerer faces than Humpty Dumpty ever dreamed of, behind her back. ‘ It’s Ameaine; that’ll set you on your pins right lively.’ Like many other women she never buys anything, not even an inner sole or a cornball, without considerable talk. It is her way. ‘ What complaint do you sell your Ameaine for mostly ? ’ she inquired, as the clerk opened the case and took down a bottle. She placed the trumpet to her car for the clerk to answer, when the boy exclaimed as he danced about the floor — ‘To start the ear wax out of old maids’ heads,’

‘ Everything,’ replied the clerk, putting his mouth to the trumpet. ‘ Neuralgia, did you say ? ’ The clerk turned round ; bit his lips and then bowed his head. ‘ How is it for lameness across the kidneys V she enquired, feeling for her handkerchief. ‘ Bully,’ answered the boy, throwing his arras about a post that stood in the centre of the store, and sliding to the floor. ‘ ’Twill brace you up like a liberty pole.’ ‘ Good,’ said the clerk, covering his mouth with his hand. ‘ How does it affect the appetite ?’ ‘ Make you want to eat an elephant every fifteen minutes in the day,’ said the boy, dropping a peach stone into the mouth of the trumpet, ‘ and nights you’ll have to take a horse mackerel to bed with you to keep from starving before morning.’ ‘ Just the thing,’ answered the clerk, after becoming sober by thinking of a funeral. ‘ Know any one personally that it has helped ?’ enquired the customer, after reading the directions on the bottle. ‘ Yes,’ said the boy, taking hold of her bonnet strings, ‘ it cured a big four hundredpound nigger down here in Charles street, who was so weak that he couldn’t clean his teeth for more’n forty years.’ ‘Yes, several,’ answered the clerk, after having a laugh down behind the show-case. ‘ Who ? ’ enquired the lady. ‘ The Cardiff Giant,’ said the boy, making an attempt to stand on his head. ‘ Perius Combs,’ said the clerk. * Phineus Toombs. Who’s he ’ ’ enquired the lady.

‘ A man with a wart on his ear, who came home to Lynn from the war on a cannon ball, and lodged on the roof of the city hall, without any limbs and only one lung,’ said the boy. ‘A neighbour of mine,’ said the clerk, running his handkerchief down bis throat. ‘ That’s a grand good thing,’ remarked the clerk, after the lady had read the directions on the bottle some twenty times. . ‘ I didn’t understand you,’ said she, throwing up the trumpet, and giving the clerk a blow on the nose. Here the boy grabbed the trumpet from his aunt, and turning the peach stone out on the floor, gave it a kick out the door and said—- ‘ He says that it’s the boss, that it will put teeth in your mouth, hair on your head, remove freckles, corns and cat boils, make your cheeks red and your feet small, brace you up so you can become a circus performer or a dog lighter, just which you prefer, and make you feel like a girl of eighteen so you can catch a husband ; come, try it if you are going to.’ Part of this the lady heard and part of it she didn’t, but the clerk heard every word, and while the last half of it was being delivered he was in the back room trying to repair his broken suspenders. Soon Mr Brown, the proprietor, came in, when she immediately bought two bottles of the Arneaine, and she started for home, hoping soon to become what she had pictured herself in her dreams of the night previous.