and began again to consider.
The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits. One of them--a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes--took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion said:
'You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder--Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.'
Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my compainion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further.
'My name,' said I, glibly, 'is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas.'
'I knew you were a druggist,' said my fellow traveler, affably. 'I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention.'
'Are all these men druggists?' I asked, wonderingly.
'They are. This car came through from the West. And they're your old-time druggists, too--none of your patent tablet-and- granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I've got an idea to spring on this convention--new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart.-- one's poison, you know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?'
'It seems to me a very good one,' I said.
'All right! When I spring it on the convention you back it up. We'll make some of these Eastern orange- phosphate-and-massage- cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic tablets.'
'If I can be of any aid,' I said, warming, 'the two bottles of--er--'
'Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash.'
'Shall henceforth sit side by side,' I concluded, firmly.
'Now, there's another thing,' said Mr. Bolder. 'For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer--the magnesia carbonate or the pulverised glycerrhiza radix?'
'The--er--magnesia,' I said. It was easier to say than the other word.
Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles.
'Give me the glycerrhiza,' said he. 'Magnesia cakes.'
'Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases,' he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. 'I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory--don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget?'
I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following:
'DENVER, June 12.--Elwyn C. Belford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well- known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it my be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man.'
'It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder,' I said, after I had read the despatch. 'This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married, and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name, a history or a home.'
'Oh, gammon and jalap!' said Mr. Bolder. 'It's larks they're after. There's too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: 'He hypnotized me.''
Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments and philosophy.
We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name 'Edward Pinkhammer' in the register. As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy--a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into the world. The old fetters-- whatever they had been--were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's learning and experience.
I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no baggage.
'The Druggists' Convention,' I said. 'My trunk has somehow failed to arrive.' I drew out a roll of money.
'Ah!' said he, showing an auriferous tooth, 'we have quite a number of the Western delegates stopping here.' He struck a bell for the boy.
