PIZUN AND KI-NINE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1753, 2 October 1879, Page 2

PIZUN AND KI-NINE.

She wasn’t after hair-dye, cosmetics, sofnted soaps or any of those gimcracks, but when the druggist had finished patting up a prescription to cure a long-faced boy of hacking c-.ugh, she turned from the stove and asked ; “ Do you keep drags and medicines and pizens and so on ? ” “ Oh, yes, we keep all such things." “And ki-nine.” “ Yes, we have quinine." “ Well, I called in to see about gettin’ pizen and some ki-nine, but I duuno. So many folks have been slaughtered by druggists’ mistakes that I’m eanemost afraid even to ask for camfur gum, tbo’ I suppose I can smell camfur gum further off than any other woman in Michigan. Have you killed anybody by putting up morphine for bakm powder ? ” “ Never.” “ Been in the business long ? " “Only twenty-one years ” “Well, you orter know gum ’Rabio from sweet ile by this time, but some men are awful keerless I’ve had a brother pizuned by wrong medicine, and I’m a little shaky. Where is your ki-nine 1 ” “This is it,” he replied, as he took down the jar. She wet her finger, pushed it into the jar, and then rubbed it on hrr tongue. “Tastes like it, but I dunno. Sure that ain't morphine ? ” “ Yes, very sure.” “ Sure your clerk washed the jar out clean afore he put the ki-nine in ? ” “ Oh, I washed it myself. “If this shouldn’t be ki-nine yon’d have the law put to you the worst kind. We’ve got money in the bank, and we’d never settle for no 10,000 dols I " “ I know it to be quinine.” “ Well, then, gimmie 15 cents’ worth, and I want down weight, too. If I'm treated well I’m a great hand to trade at one place, but the minit I see any stinginess or cheatin' a yoke of oxen couldn’t pull me into that store again.” He weighed out the drug, labelled it with great care, and then said : “ Now I want 10 cents worth of pizun to kill rats.” “ What kind ? ” “ Why the pizun kind of course. Piznn is pizun the world over.” “ Don’t seem as if you were used to handling ’em.” “ Do you want arsenic T ” “Certainly, bnt yon want to be powerful keerful! I’m a woman of fifty, and I’ve nnst’d the sick ever since I was a girl, bnt I never handle pizun without a chill creepin’ up my back. Where is it? ” He handed down the jar, and she smelt of the stopper, shook her head, tamed the jar around and whispered ; “ That looks a powerful sight like cream-a-tarter ! ”

“Oh, no—that’s arsenic and no mistake." “Well, I’ve got to take the chances, I s’pose. I’ll take three cents worth—down weight. Any one who will be stingy sellin’ Sizun will be stingy in other things, and I o hate a stingy person. My first husband was powerful stingy, and he was struck by lightning.” When the poison had been weighed and labelled, she carefully took up the package and said : “Now, then, write on this that it is to be kept in the old china teapot, on the third shelf in the pantry, and that it’s for rats. Then write on this that it is to be kept in the old coffeepot in the cupboard, and it’s for chills," The druggist followed orders, and the old lady put the “pizun ” in her pocket and the “ ki-nine” in her reticule, and went on saying : “It may be all right, but I dinno. If my old man is took off instead of the rats. I’ll begin a lawsuit next day after the funeral 1 ” —“Detroit Free Press.”