1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

Old Waldorf Bar Days

But every time he sought to illustrate the definition of the term, the aftermath was a headache from which there was no refuge but sleep, and the next morning he would have what was euphuistically described as "a head." Nat– urally, he would turn for relief to his own prescription counter, but none of the patent medicines or any formula he compounded had seemed to solve the difficulty. One night, it so happened that Mrs. Emerson was waiting up for him. She followed him into the drug store and watched as, from force of habit, he took a little something from a bottle here, and from another bottle there, until he had ap– parently satisfied himself that he had put together enough things to achieve definite results. Now his wife watched him go to the spigot and turn it on. To her amazement, the stuff in the glass began to foam until it "boiled" over. At that point, her husband lifted the glass and drank it down. A half hour later, his head was as clear as a bell. His wife was amazed. "Why, I have never seen you get over it so quickly," she said. "You are right," her spouse replied. Then, as a thought struck him, he exclaimed: "Do you know, if I could only remember what I put in that tumbler, I believe I'd have somethin·g to make a fortune out of!" "I can tell you," his wife assured him. "I watched you as you took up every bottle, and I know exactly what you used and how much of each thing." Not long afterward, Emerson 'approached a member of a well known Baltimore banking firm. His story was received with skepticism. "But," said the banker, according to the locally current version of the incident, "if it does what you say it does, there is a fortune in it. I'll tell you what," he added; "I'll get on a jag and if your remedy does the same thing for me that it did for you, I'll see that you get financed." And so, the story goes on, the banker went out one evening and treated himself to one glorious toot. Emerson met him at an appointed hour, showed him the powder, put it in a glass, and added water. The stuff fizzed up. The [ 134]