The Telephone Booth Indian Read Online Free PDF Page A

the people if they are perfectly satisfied to give him five dollars for an empty box. Sensing that it is a game, they shout “Yes!” He hands back their money and presents each of them with a “handsome and valuable gift,” usually a wallet or vanity case worth about a dime, as a reward for their confidence in him. Next he calls for tendollar bids on an empty box. By this time the contagion of something for nothing has spread, and the countrymen eagerly pass up their bills. He asks them if they would have any kick if he kept their money and gave them nothing but an empty box. Remembering the previous routine, they shout “No!” “Nobody will have any complaint if I keep the money?” the jam guy asks. Nobody. The auditors expect him to return the money, with a present as a reward for their faith. The auctioneer assures them that he will
not
give them an empty box for their money. He will give to each and every one of them a special platinumrolled alarm clock “worth ten dollars in itself.” He makes a speech about the alarm clock. That is not all. He will give to each a beautiful Persian rug, worth twentyfive dollars, specially imported from Egypt. He makes a speech about the rug. That is not all. He adds a couple of patent picture frames “worth six dollars apiece.” In short, he loads each of his confidingacquaintances with an assortment of bulky junk and then declares the sale at an end, retaining all the tendollar bills.
    Jamming paid well and yielded a certain artistic satisfaction, but it did not content Dufour. He felt that it was not creative and that it had only an oblique educational value. It was at the Louisiana State Fair at Shreveport, in 1927, that Lew found his real vocation. He recognized it instantly; Keats felt the same way when he opened Chapman's Homer. There was a medicine pitchman at the Fair who carried with him a few bottles of formaldehyde containing human embryos. The pitchman used the embryos only as a decoy to collect a “tip,” which is what a pitchman calls an audience, but Dufour, who was at the Fair with his auction store, dropped in on the medicine show one evening and at once sensed there was money in the facts of life. He must have had an intimation of that vast, latent public interest in medicine which has since been capitalized upon by Dr. Heiser, Dr. Cronin, Dr. Hertzler, Dr. Menninger, and all the other authors of medical best sellers. “A scientist may know a lot about embryology and biology,” Lew has since said, “but it don't mean anything at the ticket window because it's not presented right. I felt the strength of the thing right away.” From the day when he decided to present biology effectively, Lew began to collect suitable exhibits.
    The important thing in assembling a cast for a biology show is to get a graduated set of human embryos which may be used to illustrate the development of an unborn baby from the first month to the eighth. The series parallels, as the lecturers point out, the evolution of man through the fish, animal, and primate stages. As an extra bit of flash, a good show includes some life groups of prehistoric men and women huddled around a campfire. Sometimes it takes months to put together a complete set of specimens. While it is true, as Lew sometimes roguishly observes, that you cannot buy unborn babies in Macy's or Gimbel's, thereare
subrosa
clearing houses for them in most large cities. It is now a small industry, though seldom mentioned by chambers of commerce. The embryo business even has its tycoon, to borrow a word from graver publications, a man in Chicago who used to be chief laboratory technician at a medical school. The specimens are smuggled out of hospitals by technicians or impecunious internes. Hospitals have a rule that such specimens should be destroyed, but it is seldom rigidly enforced; no crime is involved in selling one. Dufour can afford to keep companies standing by. The actors need no rehearsal and draw no salary.