The Shock
A man with a very pale face, wearing a woolen comforter and holding a stick in his hand, into a Houston drug store yesterday and leaned against the counter, holding the other hand tightly against his breast.
The got a graduating glass, and poured an of frumenti into it quickly, and handed it to him. The man drank it at a .
“Feel better?” asked the .
“A little. Don’t know when I had such a shock. I can hardly stand. Just a little more, now—”
The clerk gave him another ounce of .
“My pulse has started again, I believe,” said the man. “It was terrible, though!”
“Fell off a wagon?” asked the clerk.
“No, not exactly.”
“Slip on a banana peel?”
“I think not. I’m getting again, if you—”
The obliging clerk administered a third dose of the .
“Street car run over you?” he asked.
“No,” said the pale man. “I’ll tell you how it was. See that red-faced man out there swearing and dancing on the corner?”
“Yes.”
“He did it. I don’t believe I can stand up much longer. I—thanks.”
The man tossed off the fourth reviver and began to look better.
“Shall I call a doctor?” asked the clerk.
“No, I guess not. Your kindness has revived me. I’ll tell you about it. I have one of those toy spiders attached to a string at the end of this stick, and I saw that red-faced man sitting on a doorstep with his back to me, and I let the spider down over his head in front of his nose. I didn’t know who he was, then.
“He fell over backwards and cut his ear on the foot- and broke a set of sixty-dollar false teeth. That man is my landlord and I owe him $37 back rent, and he holds a ten-dollar mortgage on my cow, and has already threatened to break my back. I slipped in here and he hasn’t seen me yet. The shock to my feelings when I saw who it was, was something awful. If you have a little more of that spirits now, I—”