"Why, in the medical books it has been analyzed, and they say it's nothin' but sugar-house molasses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see 'Townsend's Saxferilla,' and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a compound like this here--nothin' but molasses and whiskey, and essence to scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was about to make his fortune off on it, some speculators see he was doin' a good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way they circumscribed him. They hired an old fellow,--I believe he was a porter in a store when they found him,--named Jacob Townsend, and a right rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn't but one reliable eye, and a regular old rumsucker. "Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a 'saxferilla,' with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye cocked on the crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know. So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store a bottle or two that had _fomented_, they made a great noise about the bogus saxferilla, 'busting the bottles,' and all that, and again asserting that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it." Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:-- "Saxferilla is all a humbug!" S. P. Townsend, as is well known, amassed a fortune, at one time, on the profits of the "sarsaparilla," put up, as the reader may remember, in huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. XL. p. 237, says, "Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black bottles," is "composed of molasses, extract of roots _or_ barks (sassafras bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and _probably_ senna and sarsaparilla. A. A. HAYES, State Assayer." The medical properties are all a _supposition_, even though Dr. Hayes was _hired_ to give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its _supposed_ merits. Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of almonds produces the _cherry_ flavor, _hydrocyanic acid_ (prussic acid, a virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute the medical properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.