Part 6 (1/2)
After a little time, however, the Doctor looked pretty sharply at Bangs, and suddenly asked: ”Well, who are you, anyhow?”
”Who am I?” returned Bangs smilingly, ”well, to be frank, I am Professor Owen, of the Indiana State University.” Bangs never blushed at the libel on the kind old man bearing that name and t.i.tle, and continued, ”It is our vacation now, and I am travelling a little in the East investigating this subject. My brother is an enthusiastic believer in it, but I wished other testimony.”
The Doctor seemed to think that the Professor took to the brandy and cigars quite too familiarly for an educator, but the explanation satisfied him, and he asked: ”Professor, you want the whole truth, don't you?”
”Nothing but the truth,” responded Bangs.
Doctor Hubbard blew out a long series of rings and expressively followed it with ”Humbug!”
”It can't be possible,” persisted Bangs.
”It oughtn't to be possible,” urged the Doctor, ”for a man of your probable talent and position to be engaged in investigating what one visit to any one of us should show to be the most infernal fraud ever practised upon the public!” said the Doctor heatedly.
Bangs expressed himself as surprised beyond measure.
”Well,” continued the Doctor earnestly, ”you came to me like a man, didn't you?”
Bangs a.s.sured him that he was quite right.
”And you came fair and square, without any ifs and ands, didn't you?”
”All of that,” responded Bangs.
”And,” continued the Doctor helping himself to the brandy, then excusing himself and pus.h.i.+ng it towards Bangs, who partook sparingly, ”you didn't want any fortune told, or predictions, or horoscopes, or any other nonsense?”
”Exactly,” said Bangs.
”And you said you'd pay me liberally for information, didn't you?”
”Yes, and I'll be as good as my word,” replied the a.s.sumed professor.
”Well, then,” continued the Doctor in a burst of good feeling, brandy and honesty, ”you see in me an unsuccessful physician, a disciple of aesculapius without followers. I graduated with high honors, hung out my sign, sharpened my tools, moulded my pills, drank a toast to disease, but waited in vain for patronage. As this became monotonous,” continued the Doctor, taking another pull at the brandy bottle, then wiping the mouth and pa.s.sing it to Mr. Bangs, who excused himself, ”I glided into a 'specialist.' It required too much money to advertise, and the papers slashed me villainously besides. _Then_ I became a Spiritualist--it's the record of every one of us. You can see,” and the Doctor waved his hand towards the cosy appointments in a satisfied way, ”I am pretty comfortable now.”
”Yes, quite comfortable,” said Bangs, wondering what the Doctor was driving at.
”So I am an enthusiastic Spiritualist,” resumed the happy physician, ”for its profession has provided me with necessities, comforts, and even luxuries.”
”Do you really effect any of the marvellous cures you advertise?”
”Most a.s.suredly,” he replied.
”And may I ask how?” interrogated Mr. Bangs.
”In the good old-fas.h.i.+oned way--salts, senna, calomel, and the blue-pill,” said the Doctor, laughing heartily.
”And is not the aid of the spirits essential to your cures?”
”A belief, or _faith_, that such an agency is used, does the whole thing, Professor.”
”And is there no such thing?” persisted Bangs.