I9 6 THE MICROSCOPE. 



Again he stuck, the tooth-pick into the glass, smeared the lens, 

 and lo ! a host of paste eels again. 



I wiped off the lens, took my finger and dipped a drop of water 

 up and was about to smear it on the lens, when the Fakir said : 



"Now, then! sir, move on. You don't want to buy, and are 

 taking up the room of them that do." 



I "moved on," but not until I had seen him dip the tooth-pick 

 in a pot of sour paste under the stand and freshly charge it with 

 eels. While I stood there he sold not less than twenty "'scopes," 

 as he elegantly termed them, and everyone of them on the strength 

 of the "fake." The animalcules in the water did the business. 



Among the purchasers was a "gray" of the most pronounced 

 type, but dressed up to the nines in illy-fitting store-clothes. He 

 was a "country doctor," in town to see the sights. After looking at 

 the squirming eels he informed the Fakir that he was in need of an 

 instrument to examine urine, and judging from the clearness with 

 which that showed the water-bugs, it was the very thing he wanted. 

 He got it, and I fancy that I can see him now finding spermatozoa 

 in urine, and filaria in blood. He will have no end of "bacteria" 

 in his conversation for the next six months. 



Chance has favored me this evening, since writing the above, 

 with a conversation with the Fakir. In fact, to my astonishment, 

 he has just paid me a visit at my office and made a clean breast of 

 the matter. He introduced himself by saying that he had sold 

 'scopes in every city and town of any size in the country, and that I 

 was the first person who had detected the " fake " which made his 

 instruments sell. His conversation was so interesting that I must 

 reproduce a portion of it, at least. 



"There's -five principal men," said he, "who make a regular 

 business of traveling over the country with 'scopes for sale on the 

 streets. There is one boss man — the feller that invented that 

 "fake," and he has the secret of how to make that stuff. He has 

 sold it (the secret) to the other four, getting from twenty to fifty 

 dollars apiece from them for the receipt of how to make it. I don't 

 know the secret myself. Most of us get a little of the stuff from 

 him to start with, and then we keep it up by adding sour paste to it 

 from time to time. One time mine give out in San Francisco, and 

 I had to send to Pittsburg, Pa., for a fresh supply." 



"Pooh-pooh!" said I, "what nonsense! Why, all sour paste 



