O. Henry

              The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

   THE BLUE LIGHT DRUG STORE is down-town, between the Bowery and 
First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the 
shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of 
bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for a pain-killer 
it will not give you a bonbon.
   The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It 
macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To 
this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk - pills 
rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with 
the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in 
little round, pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about 
which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become 
candidates for the cough-drops and soothing syrups that wait for them 
inside.
Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend 
of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of 
pharmacy is not glace. There, as it should be, the druggist is a 
counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary 
and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is 
venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the 
gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, bespectacled nose and narrow, 
knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue 
Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.
  Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's, two squares away. Mrs. 
Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain 
- you must have guessed it - Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his 
thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure 
and officinal - the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But 
Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of 
his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior 
being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside, he 
was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting 
clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and 
valerianate of ammonia.
   The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk 
McGowan.
   Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed 
about by Rosy. But he was no out-fielder as Ikey was; he picked them 
off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and 
often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted 
with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening 
spent along the Bowery.
   One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, 
comely, smoothed-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.
   `Ikey,' said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat 
opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, `get busy with your ear. 
It's drugs for me if you've got the line I need.'
   Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences 
of conflict, but found none.
   `Take your coat off,' he ordered. `I guess already that you have 
been stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have many times told you those 
Dagoes would do you up.'
   Mr. McGowan smiled. `Not them,' he said. `Not any Dagoes. But 
you've located the diagnosis all right enough - it's under my coat, 
near the ribs. Say! Ikey - Rosy and me are goin' to run away and get 
married to-night.'
   Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar , 
holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it 
not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom.
   `That is,' he continued, `if she keeps in the notion until the time 
comes. We've been layin' pipes for the gateway for two weeks. One day 
she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on to-
night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole 
days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll 
stand me up when it comes to the scratch.'
   `You said you wanted drugs,' remarked Ikey.
   Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed - a condition opposed 
to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine alinanac 
into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his 
finger.
   `I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start to-night 
for a million,' he said. `I've got a little flat up in Harlem all 
ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. 
And I've engaged a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 
9.30. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't change her mind again!' 
- Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts.
   `I don't see then yet,' said Ikey shortly, `what makes it that you 
talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about it.'
   `Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit,' went on the uneasy 
suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. `For a week he hasn't let 
Rosy step outside the. door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder 
they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll 
never regret flyin' the coop with Chunk McGowan.'
   `You will excuse me, Chunk,' said Ikey. `I must make a prescription 
that is to be called for soon.'
   `Say,' said McGowan, looking up suddenly, `say, Ikey, ain't there a 
drug of some kind - some kind of powders that'll make a girl like you 
better if you give 'em to her?'
   Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior 
enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued: `Tim 
Lacy told me once that he got some from a croaker up
town and fed 'em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose 
he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. 
They was married in less than two weeks.'
   Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than 
Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine 
wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's 
territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible 
failure:
   `I thought,' went on Chunk hopefully, `that if I had one of them 
powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace 
her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess 
she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at 
coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff'll work just for 
a couple of hours it'll do the trick.'
   `When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?' asked 
Ikey.
   `Nine o'clock,' said Mr. McGowan. `Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy 
goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano lets me through to 
his backyard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I 
go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to 
make it early on the preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy 
don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, 
Ikey?'
   Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly.
   `Chunk,' said he, `it is of drugs of that nature that 
pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my 
acquaintance would I entrust a powder like that. But for you I shall 
make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to think of you.'
   Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a 
powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of 
morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, 
and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this 
powder would ensure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to 
the sleeper. This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to 
administer it in a liquid, if possible, and received the hearty thanks 
of the backyard Lochinvar.
   The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his 
subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the 
plans of McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr. Riddle was a stout man, 
brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action.
   `Much obliged,' he said briefly to Ikey. `The lazy Irish loafer! My 
own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go up there myself after 
supper and load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my backyard 
he'll go away in an ambulance instead of a bridal chaise.'
   With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many-hours' deep 
slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, 
Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture.
   All night in the Blue Light Store he waited at his duties for 
chance news of the tragedy, but none came.
   At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey 
started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lo! as 
he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a 
passing street-car and grasped his hand - Chunk McGowan with a 
victor's smile and flushed with joy.
   `Pulled it off,' said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. `Rosy hit the 
fire-escape on time to a second and we was under the wire at the 
Reverend's at 9.30 1/4. She's up at the flat - she cooked eggs this 
mornin' in a blue kimono - Lord I how lucky I am! You must pace up 
some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, 
and that's where I'm heading for now.'
   `The - the powder?' stammered Ikey.
   `Oh, that stuff you gave me!' said Chunk broadening his grin; 
`well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at 
Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, "Chunk, if you 
get the girl get her on the square - don't try any hocus-pocus with a 
thoroughbred like her." And I keeps the paper you give me in my 
pocket. And then my lamps falls on another party present, who, I says 
to myself, is failin' in a proper affection toward his comin' son-in-
law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle's 
coffee - see?'