Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1917 — His Medicine [ARTICLE]

His Medicine

I When Jenks got his new set of encyclopedias he was missed from the corner drug store for three nights, but on the fourth night he showed up, bought his accustomed cigar and took his usual seat on one of the roun<4 stools at the end of the soda fountain. It was noted that he was unusually silent and solemn and did not join at first In the discussion of the ordinary topics that were broached by the other members of the “club” touching upon current events, but when the subject of the war came up and some mention was made of the asphyxiating gas and the curtains of fire, Jenks brightened up aqd threw in the remark, rather casually: - “There’s nothing new about the use of liquid fire in the war. Greek fire was in use by the Greeks of Constanttnople throughout the middle ages. The Assyrian bas-reliefs also show that it was used long before the Christian era. It was said to be composed of quick sulphur, dregs of wine, Persian gum, baked salt, pitch, petroleum and other known combustibles —” The “bunch” eyed Jenks curiously, but refrained from comment. He had evidently opened up a jackpot and found them with nothing to draw to. Somebody switched the talk to brands of cigars and then to pipe smoking. “Give me a good old briar pipe,” said Jones. “But you can’t get them any more,” put in Jenks. “There isn’t one genuine briar root pipe in ten thousand nowadays. The pipe generally known as the briar root pipe is really made from the roots of the tree heath —the Erica arborea is the technical name for it. It is obtained on the hills of the Maremma and they ship it to Leghorn to be manufactured, and I want to tell you boys that it is some process even to prepare those roots for the pipe cutters. They soak them in a vat for twelve hours —that’s what gives them that yellowish brown color that we all appreciate so much in a good briar pipe.” “Sounds like a pipe to me,” muttered the doctor who officed upstairs, but the rest of the crowd lapsed into silence for a few moments and then began to talk about the new city charter. Jenks continued every night t<yspring new morsels of abstruse information on them, until finally, one night, after he had gone home, they met in executive session and took up Jenks’ case. “Where in the world is that guy digging up that high-browed stuff anyway?” growled Smith“Don’t you know?” said the drug clerk, “he’s just got a set of encyclopedias, some down and the balance later on, and he dopes up on it every night.” “Oh, that’s it, is it?” said the doctor. “Well, that reminds me. I’ve got an old book upstairs that I was looking over the other night. It is called ‘Facts, Fables and Fancies,’ a compilation of things not usually to be found in the encyclopedias. Let’s give Jenks a dose of his own medicine.” So, for a couple of nights longer they continued to listen to Jenks’ learned discourses, while they passed the book around and loaded for him. Then one night, when they had got to talking politics and somebody said something about Tammany Hall, the doctor, fixing his eye carelessly upon Jenks, interjected the remark: “The Tammany tiger never changes its spots. It is up to the same tricks now that it was in the days of the Locofocos.”

“Yes,” said Jones, the Locofocos were the first fellows that let in the light on that Tammany bunch. But New York was always a bear pit for . politics. You remember the- Goodies in DeWitt Clinton’s time—they came near splitting up the old Federalist party.” “Goodies? Locofocos? Where do you get that kind of talk?” asked Jenks, a little uneasy, apparently, after the words had been bandied back and forth. “What? Never heard of the Goodies? Or the Locofocos? Surprised at you, Jenks —a man of your reading. The Goodies was the name of a political sect that originated in New York about the year 1814. They got their name from a series of well-writ-ten articles attacking DeWitt Clinton and also the pacifists of the Federalist party, signed ‘Abimelech Coody’—-the articles were really written by Gulian C. Verplanck. DeWitt Clinton called the Goodies, a ‘hybrid sect, composed ot the spawn of Federalism and Jacobinism neither fish nor flesh, nor bird nor beast, mighty bitter language for those days.’ “And the Locofocos,” spoke up the doctbr—“But you surely know who the. Locofocos were? No? Well, the Locofocos were a political party that originated in 1835, at a stormy meeting in, Tammany Hall. They were the original ‘Eternal Rights’ party. During the uproar at the meeting the Tammany men turned out the lights cm them, but the' equal rights fellows had all provided themselves in advance with the new locofoco matches and candles, and so they just lit up and lit into the

Tammanyites, and that’s how they got their name. Rather curious, isn’t it?* Jenks looked Worried. Then, they rubbed it in. They talked about the "Blue light Federalists,” and the “Bucktails,” and the “Barnburners* and the “Amalgamationists,” and the “Featherheads” and other forgotten bits of American political lore that they felt certain the Britannica man had overlooked. Jenks went home early and spent several hours on a still hunt through the voluminous pages of his new purchase and the next morning, bright and early, he dropped in on his bookseller. “Say, I thought you told me that I could find anything I wanted in those books you sold me. I’ll give you a ten-dollar note if you’ll find a word in there about Coodies, or LocofoCos, or Bucktails, or Featherheads,” he said, with a disgusted look. “But my dear fellow,” said the bookman, “perhaps there ain’t no such animals.” —Kansas City Star.