Another feature of the meeting was the showing of antique ink wells which had been sold. It was an interesting display.

There was a bottle auction. Each member, if he desires, is allowed to bring up to ten bottles for the sale. He marks each bottle with the price he must have to let it go. The auctioneer announces the minimum bid and if anyone wishes to buy it he must pay more, even as little as a dime or quarter. If there are no bids the bottle is returned to the owner.

I was interested in observing that among all the bottles shown there was not one like any of mine.

These men of different professions had left business cares and the problems of making a family living on the shelf as it were and were seriously discussing the merits of bottles, their shape, color, size, age, and manner of making, whether blown or molded. They were as enthusiastic as farmers at a meeting discussing cattle, hogs, sheep and crops.

Grandmother Schermers Health Restorer

D. Kintner of Columbia is enjoying an interesting phase of bottle collecting. I was surprised to learn it is possible to find bottles filled with medicines with original labels which interested people three score years and ten ago. He says that in six months he has been able to collect about 400 of them. Many of them are contained in the light cardboard boxes in which they were packed with a brochure of testimonials around the bottle.

One of them of local interest was “Grandmother Schermer’s Health Restorer” manufactured by the Eureka Medicine Co., of Bunceton, Mo.. Testimonials about its great benefits were dated 1901, 1902 and 1903.

Grandma Schermer, a native of Germany, came to Speed, Mo., to live in 1867. She brought with her a home remedy which she used for family ailments. Finally there were so many requests for it, she and her son, C.J. Walje, decided to form a company to manufacture it commercially in Bunceton.

It was purely herbal, made wholly from leaves, bark, roots, flowers and seeds. It was claimed “to prepare the body for resistance to disease, to purify the blood, promote digestion, regulate the bowels, act upon the kidneys, induce healthy respiration, quiet the nerves and induce sound restful sleep.

In Bunceton Rev. B. Marson, Pastor of the C.P. church used it and praised it for “doing what it claimed to do.” Harvey B. Moore was completely cured of indigestion by taking it. W.E. Coleman claimed it did more good than anything he had ever taken for “indigestion and that tired feeling.” Mrs. W.F. Howard had tried many remedies but 5 bottles of the Health Restorer “almost completely cured her.” Mrs. Wm. Lusk took it for two months and it did her more good than all other medicines combined which she had tried.

Mrs. Margaret E. Stegner of Speed had been afflicted with catarrh of the stomach for over 15 years, the doctors had declared it chronic. She had tried 5 or 6 doctors and patent medicines which had cost her several hundred dollars resulting in little relief. Five bottles of Grandma Schermer’s Health Restorer had done her more good than everything else put together. And John J. Blank was sick of indigestion and had a tired feeling until he feared he would take down with fever but after taking one bottle he was entirely relieved.

P.H. Kirby of Bunceton wanted it known that he had chronic malaria, a liver trouble and impure blood about 15 years, even a trip to Eldorado Springs did not keep him from feeling weak and worn out all the time. After using two bottles, he felt as though he had never been sick.

Wm. D. Woods of Tipton after suffering 18 years with malaria and impure blood and “trying several noted doctors,” was persuaded to try GSHR and claimed he would not take $500 for the benefit he derived from it.

Miss Jessie Rudolph of Boonville found it very beneficial for stomach trouble which had bothered her for three years.

Herman Kramer of Boonville had suffered indigestion for 10 years, more or less severe, had employed the best medical aid in the city but obtained only temporary relief through dieting. As soon as he began eating again he would bloat up and have cramping pains. He reduced in flesh to 128 pounds. After taking four bottles of Grandma Schermer’s medicine, the bloating and cramping disappeared and he weighed 166 pounds.

J.H. Haller wanted the world to know that for 7 or 8 years he got no relief from doctors, but four bottles of this wonderful medicine had cured him entirely.

Mrs. M.J. Goode of Syracuse suffered for 3 months with a disease the doctors diagnosed differently. One said she was in the last stage of consumption, another that she had catarrh of the stomach and enlargement of the liver. Many remedies were tried without relief. She was almost dead when Grandma’s Health Restorer saved her from an early grave. She took only four bottles before she began to feel like a new woman and her friends told her she did not look like the same person.

We wonder, after 70 years, if there are any descendants of any of these people who felt so benefitted by Grandma Schermer’s Health Restorer living now in Cooper County.

Pill Boxes

Mrs. Pete Christus of Boonville invited me to drop by to see her collection of pill boxes. She added that she had never thought of making a collection of anything herself but at one time she had a serious ear infection which required several kinds of medicine in the form of pills. Her son-in-law, Robert Preston, observing the assortment remarked that she had so many she should have some pill boxes.

However, she gave no further thought to it until he began sending them from the foreign country where he was stationed in government service. Subsequently he served in many foreign lands, and visited in others. From each he sent pill boxes to her. It was as if he had acquired a gracious habit. Relatives and friends seeing or hearing about the fruits of his kindness followed suit and whenever they traveled abroad or in the United States they did not forget pill boxes for Mrs. Christus. Thus the pill boxes assumed the proportions of a collection.

Pill boxes! Somehow I couldn’t understand the desire of collecting boxes or bottles, reminders of illnesses of life from childhood on up.

And all of the pill boxes I had seen were of plain cardboard, round at first, then came the rectangular ones with a part that was pulled out like a drawer, then finally plastic containers.

One day I mentioned my feelings about collecting pill boxes to a well-informed person. He kindly and gently dispelled my ignorance by informing me that pill boxes may be very elegant; that ladies in foreign lands and even in our own who are obliged to take pills regularly, frequently carry tiny boxes, often quite elegant, containing what they may need when away from home for short periods.

Shortly after that, a lady was dining with me. When she finished her dinner, she brought out a dainty gold box, chased on its sides with a hinged top of red onyx. It was beautiful! When I asked about it she said it was a little something very old which she had inherited, the pill box.

Now, having seen an aristocrat of the pill box family, I was full-steam-ahead to see as soon as possible Mrs. Christus’ collection. I did before the end of that day.

At first sight of it, an old quotation flashed over my mind, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

Mrs. Christus opened the lid of the clear-topped table. It contained the display, the gift of her daughter and son-in-law. Mrs. Christus had it lined with red velvet and invited me to take up each tiny, rare item to examine the fine work of skilled artisans from many parts of the world. Most of the little boxes are an inch and a quarter in size overall. They are of gold, silver, brass, pewter with sides delicately chased. But their tops, some fit on but mostly they are hinged, are the spots where we see real artistry in tiny floral embroidery on silk or velvet, hand painted designs on porcelain and ivory, artistic arraignments of colored jewels and tiny sea shells, some all jeweled, others are of enamel, mosaic and damascene.

Lilburn had begun selling off antiques kept in his office. On 24 August 1977 he wrote Charles:

I had a buyer of bottles and stone jars and jugs. He came in and pointing to an old jug, said “Will you take $35 for it? I sold him $115 worth of jugs and my two pineapple bottles for $150 each, and $19 worth of old buttons. He left me several offers on bottles and plates which seemed mighty good until Warman’s new price book came out last week and listed the pineapple bitters bottle at $275.

The double steeple clock I thought I did well with when I let it go for $550 is now priced at $2500. That is as crazy as the price of hill land in Howard County.

Writer's Conference

In March of 1959 Lilburn attended a writers’ conference at which aspiring writers could have a manuscript evaluated. He writes of this to his niece, Julia Sikes:

Dear Julia,

I had a fine time in Springfield at the Writers’ Conference.

On my manuscript I got a right good report and everything criticized was right proper. As for style, it was checked for good, easy and smooth characterization: “The people are perfectly delightful. Strong qualities:

“The easy sure way each incident is told. The realness of the people.” As to plot: “It doesn’t seem to have a plot. It is a series of incidents with one thread, the church music, to hold it together.” As for marketing, or a market: “As it stands, I can’t think of any. Shame too, for it is delightful.”

At lunch I sat by the critic, Loula Grace Erdman, and we talked of everything except manuscripts, and at 1:30 she was quite professional during the interview, when she said some more nice things about the paper. Said she did hope I would go on with it and if I wished her to, she would write to an editor she knew well that I was going to send him a manuscript, not to consider in its entirety, but to determine if there were parts which would be suitable for his magazine.

After the meeting, I was asked out to Adelaide Jone’s little house for a coffee in the evening. Adelaide is Director of the Conference, whom I have known ever since she struggled and succeeded in getting me into the State Writers’ Guild.

Considering manuscripts as babies, this was a clinic on child care, for the help of crippled children, or the retarded, and I read the “case history” of all who would let me have a copy. Never have I seen so many expectant mothers and fathers. This meeting was a sort of clinic for the hopefully expectant, and those who had given forth successful births were there to advise those who had not. The latter were advised how to care for the child, what to do for its betterment, and were advised in no case was birth ever as simple as made to look in the story the papers carried last week of the woman who wouldn’t quit looking at her TV program and had her real baby while looking on. Loula Erdman advised me not to stand on the diving board but to jump in, and never to say, “Now this is how it happened” in telling of it.

One woman’s child is 600 pages about Alcibiades. Of him she said, “I have loved him for seventeen years.” Another’s was the illegitimate child of Wordsworth, another looked like a heathen idol, and one child of a poetic nature was born with its uppers.

The meeting at Adelaide’s was sort of autopsy at which Erdman and some college professors who had acted as judges on a contest, told of manuscripts they “just couldn’t read through.” They made light of others, and I wondered if put to it, they could show as much ingenuity in writing a story as some of those whose work they ridiculed?

I had wondered if my paper had really been read, but at Adelaide’s party, Erdman asked me to tell certain bits of it, so I knew she must have read it. And as I went out the door, she called, “Be sure and do something with that lovely material.”