University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
The progress of Chowder Chow and his master, continued.

We arose at an early hour in the morning to resume
our journey, but not until Captain Brown,
from an impulse of friendship, had bought of our
host, for my use, a sorry nag with saddle and bridle;
for which, as he told me afterwards, with great delight,
he had paid in counterfeit money, being some
of the remaining portion of the notes he had got for
Bay Tom. This grieved and disconcerted me
greatly; but I was not informed of it until it was
too late to make restitution.

I discovered, during the previous evening, from
some expressions of honest Turnpenny, that his little
hamlet was in possession of a post-office, at which
mails were received once a week; and that the dignity
of postmaster, along with that of publican,
centred in his honoured person.

This recalled to my memory the letter I had
written, and still carried about me, while in the
Jumping Jenny, to Dr. Howard, informing him of
my misfortunes and captivity, of the extraordinary
and most happy discovery I had made of his son
Tommy, and of my intention to effect for him and
myself a speedy escape from the hands of the invaders.
I sighed to think how I had been baffled in
regard to Tommy, who was still a prisoner; but I

felt the necessity of informing my patron of the
discovery without further delay. For this purpose,
I determined to seize the present opportunity of
committing my letter to the post; and I designed,
in the morning, to add an envelope, in which to
acquaint him with my having escaped alone, and the
necessity of his taking some steps to effect the liberation
of his son.

But when the morning came, I found our early
setting-out, which Brown declared was necessary to
our safety, deprived me of the power of adding any
thing further to the letter; which I was therefore
enforced to send as it was. As I was sensible it
would be an obviously suspicious step for me, in
person, to hand the letter to Turnpenny, I was
obliged to request Captain Brown's good offices in
the matter; and, as I gave it to him, I begged he
would not think it necessary to make as free with it
as he had done with my letter of introduction; for
which there was the less reason, as there was no
money in it. Brown laughed, and carried the letter
to Turnpenny; but I took care to keep my eye
upon him notwithstanding. As it was addressed to
Dr. Howard, which Turnpenny observed, Brown
took the occasion, and such an occasion he manifestly
could never resist, to tell him a very big falsehood,
namely, that it was a letter of his writing to
a very great and rich doctor, who wanted to buy the
secrets of the Magi and the Magi himself; for which
and whom he had offered twenty thousand dollars
in hard money; but which Brown had refused, “because
as how, it was not half the value of the articles.”

This business settled, and to my satisfaction, for
I saw the letter safely deposited in a trunk, the
strong box of the post-office, we mounted our

horses, and rode forth upon our adventures, taking
care, however, for very obvious reasons, to seek
them upon the most retired and unfrequented roads.

We stopped to dine at another out-of-the-way
hamlet; where I was compelled a second time to
assume the character of a Magus, and dispense the
wonderful drugs of the East to such as were willing
to be administered to, in our wonderful way.

As I had my reasons for preferring the Holy
Sand of the Ganges to the Mermaid's Eggs, I took
care, when the first patient appeared before me, to
pronounce the Magian Sammy-ram-ram, not
doubting that the lucky sufferer would get off with
the mildest dose of our medicines. But I soon
found that I had reckoned without my host; for
Captain Brown, who, I began clearly to perceive,
was possessed by a devil of mischief, and preferred
the energetic operation of the boluses to the gentler
effects of the Holy Sand, interpreted, this time,
Sammy-ram-ram to mean Mermaids' Eggs; and
a Mermaid's Egg he forthwith administered to the
patient. And, indeed, on all future occasions,
whether I commenced my proceedings with Sammy-ram-ram
or Holly-golly-wow, he was sure to
begin his with a tobacco bolus.

Our efforts in the cause of humanity, in this way,
were continued for rather more than a week, and
might, but for an accident of which I shall presently
speak, have continued much longer; as our Magian
pretensions, and the miraculous cures, which, it
seems, we effected, began to swell the trump of fame.
And, I believe, we might have made our fortunes,
too, so great became our renown, and the eagerness
of our patients, had we not unfortunately commenced
operations in a poor and but thinly settled
district, where credulity was much more plentiful

than money. Nevertheless, I inferred from what
Captain Brown said, that we did a pretty fair
business.

Another inference I also made, namely, that of all
the modes of swindling mankind, and, in particular,
American mankind, yet devised, drugging them with
quack medicines, is at once the easiest and most
profitable: and this opinion, drawn from my own
youthful experience in the honourable trade, I find,
in these my riper years, confirmed by the accounts
of others, and especially the accounts daily published
in the newspapers; by which it is apparent
that the quack trade has arrived at a pitch of stupendous
importance, and bids fair to become, in
time, the great business of the country.

To Captain Brown this kind of life, which entirely
fulfilled his ideas of an honest one, presented
a variety of charms, which my conscience did not
permit me to find in it. To gull was the first of his
delights, and the more impudent the cheat, the
better; and as to the consequences of his roguery,
whether serious or not, they gave him not the least
concern. His only regret, as constantly expressed,
was that my obstinate adherence to the Holy Sand
of the Ganges, prevented his oftener administering
the Mermaid's Eggs; which he had the greatest
satisfaction in doing, as well as in watching their
lugubrious effects upon the visages and stomachs of
his patients.

Next to this, was the pleasure he took in stretching
the credulity of his patrons to the utmost. He
was not even content with exacting full belief in
the extraordinary pretensions he put forth in favour
of his medicines; he vowed Chowder Chow could
cure a patient without seeing him, nothing more
being necessary than that some friend should step

forward as his representative, and pronounce his
name; whereupon Chowder Chow could, and would,
immediately, he declared, with unerring sagacity,
determine the medicine that was necessary for his
case and constitution; which medicine was warranted
by him just as certainly to effect a cure, as if
administered by his own hands. In this assumption,
in truth, we found our greatest advantage and
profit; since, as we never tarried at any one place
longer than to eat or sleep, and, therefore, did not
wait until the sick and ailing could be brought to us
to be physicked, we must have lost a great many
patients, had we not thus possessed the power of
physicking them at a distance.

To me, as I have already hinted, this life of deception
and roguery was distressing enough, and only
endured for a time to serve the purpose of self-preservation.
Every day increased my longing to
throw off the humiliating mask of the merry-andrew,
which I was compelled to wear, and, with
it, the friendship and company of Captain Brown;
whose character, now fully exposed, his wild,
graceless, unprincipled, devil-may-care disposition,
I knew not whether I most wondered at, or
detested.

Of this desire, I did not scruple to make him
acquainted; but he only laughed, and asked me,
“how I was to navigate clear of the officers of
justice, if I lost his convoy?”—a question that
commonly reduced me to silence and submission.
Towards the end of the week, however, I began to
think I was now so far removed from the coast, and
from the theatre of war, for we had been journeying
westward all the time, as to be no longer in
danger of a court-martial; and one fine, but sultry
evening, upon the banks of the river Roanoke,

which we had now reached, I resolved that that
should be the last day of my humiliation.

“To-morrow,” quoth I to myself, “I will tell
Captain Brown, or Hellcat, or whatever he may
call himself, that he must, in future, be his own
Magus; pronounce the absurd Holly-golly-wow
with his own lips; and dispense with his own hands
(as he has, in fact, done all along,) his confounded
Mermaids' Eggs, and the Holy Sand of the
Ganges.”