Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1874 — “You Pays Your Money and Takes Your Choice.” [ARTICLE]

“You Pays Your Money and Takes Your Choice.”

A Paris correspondent writes: A good story among the many that might be told in connection with the rage for undergoing the action of mineral water panaceas is that of the renowned actor, Perlet, wjiose leanness was something phenomenal and who was tormented by the most determined longing to “get some flesh on his bones.” A well-known physician of this city advised him to go to One of the bathing-places in the Pyrenees. Perlet accordingly asked for a leave of absence from his theater and went off to the prescribed locality, where he drank and bathed with the utmost zeal and perseverance. But neither drinking nor bathing seemed to have any effect upon him, and he remained just as much a skeleton as before. “Patience!” urged the local doctor in reply to his expressions of disappointment; “ there is nothing like the water of our springs for making people fat!” One day, when Perlet was patiently soaking himself in a bath, in the hope of an increase of weight which seemed in no haste to declare itself, he oveTheard a colloquy in the bath-ing-cabinet next his own, between the local Esculapius and a lady of enormous obesity. “ Doctor,” remarked the lady, “ I am really losing heart and patience.” “ Why so?” inquired the doctor. “ Because, though I have been taking these waters regularly for two months, lam not one inch the smaller nor one ounce the lighter.” “ Patience, Madam!” cried the doctor, in his most persuasive tones; “ there is nothing like the water of our springs for making people thin."