Cheer Up! (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1906 Excerpt: ... the greatest breathing-spot in the world and my children dote on it, just as I did when I was a boy and used to walk up there from Greenwich Village. That was when there were goats up there and the comic papers were made up of jokes about them." He was silent for a minute and the train passed a lovely piece of woodland on its way to the dirty city. Then he said: "I tell you I love my little house out in Cranfield, and I dread the time when the children get to the age that will make the city necessary for them." IT was a little old-fashioned drug-store in a side street in Greenwich village. The small soda-fountain would have been out of date twenty years ago, and the yellowing shelves bore bottles and vials and dingy patent medicines that somehow reminded one of the days just after the Civil War. The low-ceiled place was dimly lighted by ill-smelling kerosene lamps, and the directory needed its chain to keep it from falling to pieces. Behind the prescription counter, one evening, stood the druggist proprietor, a man not far into middle age, yet wearing side whiskers that seemed indicative of his lack of progressiveness. He was making up a prescription and revolving in his mind ways and means to bring about a return of the custom that had been steadily falling off ever since the smart young druggist had opened a brilliantly lighted store on the corner below. The front door opened, and a thick-set, smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, humorous-looking man entered, with a waddling step caused by the undue stoutness of his two legs. "Hello, what's happened?" said he, as soon as he came in. "Why, it smells like a violet ranch. Say, I need some of that perfume right Talking quickly and loudly as was his wont, as he approached the prescription desk, although he saw nothing ...