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Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot by Charles Heber Clark
page 91 of 304 (29%)
needed by her. Poor uneducated animal! she can't grasp these higher
problems, and she goes on nibbling sour-grass and other things, and
filling her milk with acid, which destroys human membranes and induces
colic. Then science comes to the rescue. Professor Huxley tells us
that chalk cures acidity. Consequently, I get some chalk, stir it in
my cans and save the membranes of my customers without charging them a
cent for it--actually give it away; and yet they talk about us milkmen
'sif we were buccaneers and enemies of the race.

"But I don't care. My conscience is clear. I know mighty well that I
have a high and holy mission to perform, and I'm going to perform it
if they burn me at the stake. What do I care how much this pump costs
me if it spreads blessings through the community? What difference does
it make to a man of honor like me if chalk is six cents a pound so
long as I know that without it there wouldn't be a membrane in this
community? Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you'll
believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful
universe will worship the memory of the first milkman who ever had a
pump and who doctored his milk with chalk. It will, unless justice is
never to have her own."

Then Mr. Biles rigged the sucker in the pump, toned up a few cans of
milk, corrected the acidity, and went into the house to receipt the
judge's bill.

Mr. Biles' theory interested the judge, but the argument did not
convince him. And so the judge resolved to buy a cow and obtain pure
milk, without regard for the alleged views of Professor Huxley.
Accordingly, he purchased a cow of a man named Smith, who lives over
at the Rising Sun. She was warranted to be fresh and a first-rate
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