nt of his tribe, deeply read in
the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most
backwoodsmen had high faith in his powers and could tell of wonderful
cures achieved by him. In Mauritius, away off yonder in the solitudes of
the Indian Ocean, there is a person who answers to our Indian doctor of
the old times. He is a negro, and has had no teaching as a doctor, yet
there is one disease which he is master of and can cure, and the doctors
can't. They send for him when they have a case. It is a child's disease
of a strange and deadly sort, and the negro cures it with a herb
medicine which he makes, himself, from a prescription which has come
down to him from his father and grandfather. He will not let any one see
it. He keeps the secret of its components to himself, and it is feared
that he will die without divulging it; then there will be consternation
in Mauritius. I was told these things by the people there, in 1896.

We had the "faith doctor," too, in those early days--a woman. Her
specialty was toothache. She was a farmer's old wife, and lived five
miles from Hannibal. She would lay her hand on the patient's jaw and say
"Believe!" and the cure was prompt. Mrs. Utterback. I remember her very
well. Twice I rode out there behind my mother, horseback, and saw the
cure performed. My mother was the patient.

Dr. Meredith removed to Hannibal, by and by, and was our family
physician there, and saved my life several times. Still, he was a good
man and meant well. Let it go.

I was always told that I was a sickly and precarious and tiresome and
uncertain child, and lived mainly on allopathic medicines during the
first seven years of my life. I asked my mother about this, in her old
age--she was in her 88th year--and said:

"I suppose that during all that time you were uneasy about me?"

"Yes, the whole time."

"Afraid I wouldn't live?"

After a reflective pause--ostensibly to think out the facts--

"No--afraid you would."

It sounds like a plagiarism, but it probably wasn't. The country
schoolhouse was three miles from my uncle's farm. It stood in a clearing
in the woods, and would hold about twenty-five boys and girls. We
attended the school with more or less regularity once or twice a week,
in summer, walking to it in the cool of the morning by the forest paths,
and back in the gloaming at the end of the day. All the pupils brought
their dinners in baskets--corn-dodger, buttermilk and other good