The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
General
The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
American wit and humor
I received a confidential letter from a man who was willing to let me
into a “good thing” if I had five hundred dollars cash capital. Mrs.
Singerly, of Frankford, related that she had shaved her dog, and shaved
him too close, and she would be relieved if I would inform her if the
Renovator would make hair grow on a dog. A devoted mother in Rhode
Island said her little boy had accidentally drank a bottle of the stuff,
and she would go mad unless I could assure her that there was no danger
of her child having his stomach choked up with hair. And over eleven
hundred boys inquired what effect the Renovator would have on the growth
of whiskers which betrayed an inclination to stagnation.
[Illustration: “SOME BALD-HEADED MISCREANT WOULD STOP ME IN THE MIDST OF
THE DANCE.”]
But the visitors were a more horrible torment. Bald men came to see me
in droves. They persecuted me at home and abroad. If I went to church,
the sexton would call me out during the prayers to see a man in the
vestibule who wished to ascertain if Pitman merely bathed his head or
rubbed the medicine in with a brush. When I went to a party, some
bald-headed miscreant would stop me in the midst of the dance to ask if
Pitman’s hair began to grow in the full of the moon or when it was new.
While I was being shaved, some one would bolt into the shop and insist,
as the barber held me by the nose, upon knowing whether Pitman wore
ventilators in his hat. If I attended a wedding, as likely as not a
bare-headed outlaw would stand by me at the altar and ask if Pitman ever
slept in nightcaps; and more than once I was called out of bed at night
by wretches who wished to learn, before they left the town, if I thought
it hurt the hair to part it behind.
It became unendurable. I issued orders to the servants to admit to the
house no man with a bald head. But that very day a stranger obtained
admission to the parlour; and when I went down to see him, he stepped
softly around, closed all the doors mysteriously, and asked me, in a
whisper, if any one could hear us. Then he pulled off a wig; and handing
me a microscope, he requested me to examine his scalp and tell him if
there was any hope. I sent him over to see Pitman; and I gloat over the
fact that he bored Pitman for two hours with his baldness.
I am sorry now that I ever wrote anything upon the subject of his hair.
A bald Pitman, I know, is less fascinating than a Pitman with hair; but
rather than have suffered this misery, I would prefer a Pitman without
an eye-winker, or fuzz enough on him to make a camel’s-hair pencil. But
I shall hardly give another certificate of cure in any event. If I
should see a patent medicine man take a mummy which died the year Joseph
was sold into Egypt, and dose it until it kicked off its rags and danced
the polka mazurka while it whistled the tune, I would die at the stake
sooner than acknowledge the miracle on paper. Pitman’s hair winds me up
as far as medical certificates are concerned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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