"I don't know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I shall
stay. You see, I sha'n't practice on anybody but Pa for a spell. I made up
my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of powdered borax,
and she came back mad. Pa seems to want to encourage me, and is willing to
take anything that I ask him to. He had a sore throat and wanted something
for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some tannin and chlorate of
potash in a mortar and grind it, and I let Pa pound it with the mortar,
and while he was pounding I dropped in a couple of drops of sulphuric
acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa's hat clear across the store, and Pa
was whiter than a sheet. He said he guessed his throat was all right, and
he wouldn't come near me again that day. The next day Pa came in, and I
was laying for him. I took a white seidletz powder and a blue one, and
dissolved them in separate glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he
didn't want some lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one
and he drank it. He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other
glass that looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he
drank it. Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa's
stummick, and began to siz and steam and foam, Pa pretty near choked to
death, and the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and
as soon as he could get his breath he yelled 'fire,' and said he was
poisoned, and called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a
doctor right in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a
stomach pump and would have baled him out in no time, only the proprietor
came in and told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of
brandy, and Pa said he felt better. Pa has learned where we keep the
liquor, and he comes in two or three times a day with a pain in his
stomach. They play awful mean tricks on a boy in a drug store. The first
day they put a chunk of something blue into a mortar, and told me to
pulverize it and then make it up into two grain pills. Well, sir, I
pounded that chunk all the forenoon, and it never pulverized at all, and