Bowser's Wrinkles

HE SUDDENLY DISCOVERS THAT THE CREASES MAKE HIM LOOK OLD.

Decies to Be Rid of Them at Once. Buys a Recipe From a “Professor” and Compounds Mixtures That Nearly Destroys His Cuticle.

There was a certain air of mystery and preoccupation about Mr. Bowser during the dinner hour the other evening, and Mrs. Bowser couldn’t figure out whether he had invented a new bunghole for barrels or was going to try sleeping in  a hammock for his rheumatism. They had returned to the sitting room, and he had been reading and smoking for a quarter of an hour when he quietly asked:

“What did you use to take the wrinkles off your face?’

“Why, I never had any yet,” she replied. 

“But women who do have wrinkles case something, don't they.”

“Yes. There are half a dozen sort of flesh food, and they also have their faces massaged. How came you to think about wrinkles?”

“I — I was thinking of taking mine,” he stammered as he hitched around uneasily. “I’ve got three or four across my forehead and lots of them at the corners of my eyes, and they must make me look ten years older than I am.” 

“But they don't,” protested Mrs. Bowser. “YOu have wrinkles, but they belong to a man of your age. You don’t want to look like a boy, do you?”

“No. Neither do I want to look as if I came out of the ark. A woman came up to me on the street the other day and called me grandpa. It must have been these wrinkles that deceived her. Do I walk like an old goat.” 

“Of course not.”

“Any hump between my shoulders?”

“No. You look just like what you are—a man in your prime. Wrinkles give dignity to a man of your age, and they also portray character. It is a matter of history that Cicero had wrinkles at thirty, and we know that Washingotn did at forty.”

“What has Cicero or Washington to do with me?” sharply demanded Mr. Bowser. “We are living in an entirely different age. When I have to pull myself upstairs and have somebody feed me with a spoon, I’m willing to be called grandpa, but until that time arrives I propose to be what I am. I don’t suppose I can grow new crop of hair on this bald head, but I can chase these wrinkles off and fill up some of the hollows. You don’t want folks to take me for your father, do you?”

“Who was talking to you today?” queried Mrs. Bowser after a silence, during which the cat came up the basement stairs with a grin on her face. 

“Half a dozen different men.”

“But who was talking to you about your wrinkles?”

“There was a man in the office to sell a recipe. He was a professor, I believe. At any rate, he had a good thing, and I bought it . He was a man fifty-five years old, and he hadn’t a wrinkle on his face. Three applications took about an acre of them off.”

“If it’s such a good thing, why don’t you go into the business of making and selling it?” she asked in a tone meant to be sarcastic. 

“That’s what I am going to do. I’ll get somebody to handle it as a side line. I figure that it can be made for 10 cents a box and sold for 50 cents, and that’s a good enough profit. I’m going to make up a batch of it this evening and give it a thorough trial. I brought home all the ingredients. If I get up in the morning with half my wrinkles gone, you’ll say it’s a good thing, won’t you?”

Mrs. Bowser realized that nothing short of the house being unroofed by a tornado would stop him from making that compound and giving it a trial, and she made no protest. When a man who is threading close to sixty begins to find fault with the wrinkles on his face, he is in no mood to argue the question. She quietly continued her reading while he descended to the kitchen and asked the cook for a tin cup and a hunk of lard. 

“Is it dynamite you are going to make, sir?” she asked as she got ready to flee.

“Nonsense. You see these wrinkles on the face, don’t you?”

“I do, sir.”

“Well, I’m going to make a preparation to take them off. It will be called Bowser’s Wrinkle Chaser, and I hope to get rich out of it. Three applications will do the trick.”

“Yes, sir, but you’d better be a little careful, sir. I had a brother of fifty who put on something to remove wrinkles, and his face all screwed up until you thought he was smelling codfish all the time. They offered him $15 a week to go in a dime museum, but the dog faced man threatened to strike and kept him out of a job. It may not explode, sir, but I’ll go up to my room until you get through experimenting.”

Mr. Bowser had provided himself with what the recipe called for, and as the lard melted he poured the ingredients in and soon had his mixture complete. When a few drops of sassafras oil had been poured in to give it a scent, he set the dish away in the icebox to cool and went upstairs. 

“Well, there was no explosion or other calamity,” he said as he sat down and took the cat on his knee.

“I should be careful of it,” replied Mrs. Bowser. “Isn’t there any old tramp around you could hire to let you experiment on him?”

“I’m not experimenting on tramps!” he shouted as his temper touched by the spark. “You might just as well ask me to try it on the cat. Do you suppose I am ass enough to buy chloride of lime for a wrinkle remover? That professor had been in the business for thirty years. It was this very compound that removed the wrinkles from Napoleon’s face when he was eighty-five years old.” 

“But Napoleon didn’t live to be eighty-five.”

“Then it was emperor of Russia or Germany. I know it was some big gun or other. The stuff is all right. Bowser’s Wrinkle Chaser will be known as the best thing out before another month has passed, and don’t you forget it. You can go to bed now, and I’ll come up after the stuff has got cool enough to apply. When you gaze into my face in the morning , you’ll be surprised, and the children on  this block will wonder  where Grandpa Bowser has gone.”

It was half an hour after Mrs. Bowser went upstairs before Mr. Bowser was ready to apply the Chaser. He removed coat, vest  and collar and tie, and he applied the mixture with libreal hand as he stood before the glass. When he had plastered on what he thought was proper quantity, he began the work of massage. In other words, he began rubbing as briskly as possible, and it wasn’t long before the friction began to tell. There was a glow, followed by a burning and prickling, and for three or four minutes he believed those wrinkles were sliding off his face around to the back of his neck and falling on the floor to be eaten up by the cat. Then the burning grew worse, and he could almost feel his skin shriveling up under it. Having Mrs. bowser’s warning on his mind, he slipped down into the kitchen and removed the grease with a dish towel,  but the burning went on just the same. The drew pan of cold water and laved his face and in doing so struck a dozen raw spots and yelled aloud.

“Well has Bowser’s Chaser chased them away?” queried a voice behind him, and he looked around to find that Mrs. Bowser had stolen softly down.

“The blamed stuff is eating the face off me!”he hoarsely whispered as he bent over the water.

“Yes, I know. Come upstairs and I’ll soak your face in sweet oil; also your head. Your face will probably be raw and blistered for weeks to come, and you may have a dozen new wrinkles to take care of, but you’ll live through it and perhaps get another call from the professor. He may drop in to sell you a hair grower used by Nero when he was a hundred years old, and you’ll buy it and become bald clear down to your shoulders.”

M. QUAD