It was a standing boast with Mr. Wiseacre that he had never been humbugged in his life. He took the newspapers and read them regularly, and thus got an inkling of the new and strange things that were ever transpiring, or said to be transpiring, in the world. But to all he cried "humbug!" "imposture!" "delusion!" If any one were so bold as to affirm in his presence a belief in the phenomena of Animal Magnetism, for instance, he would laugh outright; then expend upon it all sorts of ridicule, or say that the whole thing was a scandalous trick; and by way of a finale, wind off thus-- "You never humbug me with these new things. Never catch me in gull-traps. I've seen the rise and fall of too many wonders in my time--am too old a bird to be caught with this kind of chaff." As for Homeopathy, it was treated in a like summary manner. All was humbug and imposture from beginning to end. If you said-- "But, my dear sir, let me relate what I have myself seen--" He would interrupt you with-- "Oh! as to seeing, you may see any thing, and yet see nothing after all. I've seen the wonders of this new medical science over and over again. There are many extraordinary cures made _in imagination_. Put a grain of calomel in the Delaware Bay, and salivate a man with a drop of the water! Is not it ridiculous? Doesn't it bear upon the face of it the stamp of absurdity. It's all humbug, sir! All humbug from beginning to end. I know! I've looked into it. I've measured the new wonder, and know its full dimensions--it's name is 'humbug.'" You reply. "Men of great force of mind, and large medical knowledge and experience, see differently. In the law, _similia similiabus curanter_, they perceive more than a mere figment of the imagination, and in the actual results, too well authenticated for dispute, evidence of a mathematical correctness in medical science never before attained, and scarcely hoped for by its most ardent devotees." But he cries, "Humbug! Humbug! All humbug! I know. I've looked at it. I understand its worth, and that is--just nothing at all. Talk to me of any thing else and I'll listen to you--but, for mercy's sake, don't expect me to swallow at a gulp any thing of this sort, for I can't do it. I'd rather believe in Animal Magnetism. Why, I saw one of these new lights in medicine, who was called in to a child in the croup, actually put two or three little white pellets upon its tongue, no larger than a pin's head, and go away with as much coolness as if he were not leaving the poor little sufferer to certain death. 'For Heaven's sake!' said I, to the parents, 'aint you going to have any thing done for that child?' 'The doctor has just given it medicine,' they replied. 'He has done all that is required.' I was so out of patience with them for being such consummate fools, that I put my hat on and walked out of the house without saying a word." "Did the child die?" you ask.