The Shock

A man with a very pale face, wearing a woolen comforter and holding a slender stick in his hand, staggered into a Houston drug store yesterday and leaned against the counter, holding the other hand tightly against his breast.

The clerk got a graduating glass, and poured an ounce of spiritus frumenti into it quickly, and handed it to him. The man drank it at a gulp.

“Feel better?” asked the clerk.

“A little. Don’t know when I had such a shock. I can hardly stand. Just a little more, now⁠—”

The clerk gave him another ounce of whisky.

“My pulse has started again, I believe,” said the man. “It was terrible, though!”

“Fell off a wagon?” asked the clerk.

“No, not exactly.”

“Slip on a banana peel?”

“I think not. I’m getting faint again, if you⁠—”

The obliging clerk administered a third dose of the stimulant.

“Street car run over you?” he asked.

“No,” said the pale man. “I’ll tell you how it was. See that red-faced man out there swearing and dancing on the corner?”

“Yes.”

“He did it. I don’t believe I can stand up much longer. I⁠—thanks.”

The man tossed off the fourth reviver and began to look better.

“Shall I call a doctor?” asked the clerk.

“No, I guess not. Your kindness has revived me. I’ll tell you about it. I have one of those toy spiders attached to a string at the end of this stick, and I saw that red-faced man sitting on a doorstep with his back to me, and I let the spider down over his head in front of his nose. I didn’t know who he was, then.

“He fell over backwards and cut his ear on the foot-scraper and broke a set of sixty-dollar false teeth. That man is my landlord and I owe him $37 back rent, and he holds a ten-dollar mortgage on my cow, and has already threatened to break my back. I slipped in here and he hasn’t seen me yet. The shock to my feelings when I saw who it was, was something awful. If you have a little more of that spirits now, I⁠—”