A WALKING PESTILENCE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2232, 28 May 1881, Page 3

A WALKING PESTILENCE.

TUB BDITOB WHO HASH THE FOETtTKB OF THU PATBHT MBDIOINB MAN. [“ Carson Appeal. It was in the early days of Nevada journaliim that Peter Bonei ran the “ Weekly Intelligoncer.” The paper was well edited and a model of typographical neatness, hot somehow didn’t succeed in the journalistic race with a much more slow-paced contemporary. Bones tried every possible expedient to make his journal a success, but failed lamentably. His office gradually became a dilapidated ruin and his credit became so shaky that he subsisted solely on the quarters of pigs and hams sent in by farmers for a year’s subscription. He would give a likely agriculturist a year’s subscription and a column advertisement thrown in, in exchange for a few shoulders of bacon or a bushel of corn.

One somewhat frosty afternoon in November, after be had bullied a printer out of asking for his last month’s salary, a man stepped in, and laying down a card announced that he was a travelling agent of “ Burglobots Celebrated Medical Discovery.” " Could I insert a column advertisement in your live weekly for eighteen dollars a year P Half cosh at the end of the year and medicine ad. to be next to reading matter, and two notices monthly.” The editor turned upon the man slowly, “If I had one dollar a column, cash in hand for all the patent medicine ads. 1 have printed I would leave the infernal country by the next train. If it would help along the sale of the drag and afford any relief for the afflicted, I would gladly print the ad for nothing. I have been doing that line of business for twelve years and lam used to it.”

" Cheer up, my poor man,” said the agent. “ Have' you an elastic oonaoieuce ? Can you lie with grace and ease p Are you ready to •ell yourself to my firm for a period of years for cash ?”

“ I know of nothing which I would not do for the merest pittance.” “ Will you sign this ?” said the agent. The editor read as follows 11 Office of “ This is to certify that six months ago I was a hopeless wreck, having led a life of rioting, drunkenness, and debauchery, and utterly unable to take core of myself. I tried your Medical Discovery, and am now a picture of health and strength.” “How much for a signature?” said the editor. “Ten dollars.” He wrote his name in a bold hand and the agent pat the document in his pooket. “ Would you mind signing a certificate of a cancer cure and making an affidavit that you wore cured ? Twenty dollars is the fee.” “Bring on your cancer certificate and notary public ; I am hero.” “ Would you mind engaging yourself to to the company by the year, as a sort of movable lazar home ?”

“ Consider me engaged. You can depend on me for any disease that is laid down in the books. I will remain here and sign all the blanks you send, or travel from place to place.” The agent closed the bargain, and from that time Bones was a man once more. He faithfully kept bis part of the contract. He wrote letters dated from all parts of the country, and when a particularly aggravated case and its cure was wanted, he signed his name in bold letters, “Fetor Bonos, editor of the •Weekly Intelligencer,’ Bold Gulch, Nevada.” Then came letters of inquiry from the lame, halt, blind, and dyspeptic, asking for his reference. He found no difficulty in BHuring each and every one that he was the identical man cured. The medicine firm bent him to their own sweet will, and published pictures of him as he looked before and after taking. The horrible stereotyped outs crept into thousands of newspapers all over the United States and Hones went through nine cases of cancer in the stomach, eleven seizures of quick consumption, innumerable liver complaints, dropsy in the brain, and a continuous round of the heart disease, malaria, dyspepsia, Bright’s kidney complaint and softening of the brain, at ton dollars a ease, the editor furnishing bis own affidavits. As a permanent pestilence he was known to the perusers of newspapers all over the Great Republics and his woe-begone visage bad dozens of patent-medicine bottles in every drug store in the land. His industry and perseverance were amply rewarded, and in five years the poor, cadaverous editor had built a new house, become a picture of health and contentment, and from that until the day of his death enjoyed a regular income from a firm whose medicine he hod actually never seen. He was finally thrown from a horse and died at a ripe old ago, an honored and respected mac, leaving behind him an imperishable reputation, written on the shelves of teu thousand drug stores and embalmed in the issues of almanacs for all time. Thousands of the afflicted whose attention was directed to the wonderful cure by hi* growing and positive endorsement will never cease to rise op and call him blessed.