A White Heron and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett Page B

an’ Eve must a took mulleins fer their winter wear. Ain’t they just like flannel, for all the world? I’ve had experience, and I know there’s plenty of sickness might be saved to folks if they’d quit horse-radish and such fiery, exasperating things, and use mullein drarves in proper season. Now I shall spread these an’ dry ‘em nice on my spare floor in the garrit, an’ come to steam ‘em for use along in the winter there’ll be the vally of the whole summer’s goodness in ’em, sartin.” And she snipped away with the dull scissors, while I listened respectfully, and took great pains to have my part of the harvest present a good appearance.
    â€œThis is most too dry a head,” she added presently, a little out of breath. “There! I can tell you there’s win’rows o’ young doctors, bilin’ over with book-larnin’, that is truly ignorant of what to do for the sick, or how to p’int out those paths that well people foller toward sickness. Book-fools I call ’em, them young men, an’ some on ’em never ’ll live to know much better, if they git to be Methuselahs. In my time every middle-aged woman, who had brought up a family, had some proper ideas o’ dealin’ with complaints. I won’t say but there was some fools amongst them , but I’d rather take my chances, unless they’d forsook herbs and gone to dealin’ with patent stuff. Now my mother really did sense the use of herbs and roots. I never see anybody that come up to her. She was a meek-looking woman, but very understandin’, mother was.”
    â€œThen that’s where you learned so much yourself, Mrs. Goodsoe,” I ventured to say.
    â€œBless your heart, I don’t hold a candle to her; ’t is but little I can recall of what she used to say. No, her l’arnin’ died with her,” said my friend, in a self-depreciating tone. “Why, there was as many as twenty kinds of roots alone that she used to keep by her, that I forget the use of; an’ I’m sure I shouldn’t know where to find the most of ’em, any. There was an herb”— airb , she called it—“an herb called masterwort, that she used to get way from Pennsylvany; and she used to think everything of noble-liverwort, but I never could seem to get the right effects from it as she could. Though I don’t know as she ever really did use masterwort where somethin’ else wouldn’t a served. She had a cousin married out in Pennsylvany that used to take pains to get it to her every year or two, and so she felt ’t was important to have it. Some set more by such things as come from a distance, but I rec’lect mother always used to maintain that folks was meant to be doctored with the stuff that grew right about ‘em; ’t was sufficient, an’ so ordered. That was before the whole population took to livin’ on wheels, the way they do now. ’T was never my idee that we was meant to know what’s goin’ on all over the world to once. There’s goin’ to be some sort of a set-back one o’ these days, with these telegraphs an’ things, an’ letters comin’ every hand’s turn, and folks leavin’ their proper work to answer ‘em. I may not live to see it. ’T was allowed to be difficult for folks to git about in old times, or to git word across the country, and they stood in their lot an’ place, and weren’t all just alike, either, same as pine-spills.”
    We were kneeling side by side now, as if in penitence for the march of progress, but we laughed as we turned to look at each other.
    â€œDo you think it did much good when everybody brewed a cracked quart mug of herb-tea?” I asked, walking away on my knees to a new mullein.
    â€œI’ve always lifted my voice against the practice, far’s I could,” declared Mrs. Goodsoe;