ce of the earth, than the whole country around was laid
under tribute to furnish roots "good for the blood." These were put
into a beer to be prepared for Sarah. It was supposed by many,--and by
this wondrous wise old lady, among the rest,--that the efficacy of these
medicinal beers in cleansing the blood, must ever be in due proportion
to the number of their respective ingredients. Thus, if twenty articles,
"good for the blood," could be procured and boiled in the wort, the
result would be a compound which would be worth twenty times as much, or
at least be _many_ times as useful, in accomplishing its supposed
specific purpose, as if only one kind of root had been obtained.

It was a long time before I could break in upon this tissue of error, to
any practical purpose. For so deeply imbedded in the human brain is the
idea of purifying the blood by some such unnatural means, that one might
almost as well think of building a railroad to the moon, as of
overcoming it. They never thought--perhaps never knew--that the blood of
the human body of to-day, will be little more the blood of the body
to-morrow, than the river which flows by our door to-day will be the
river of to-morrow; and that the one can no more be purified
independently of any and all things else, than the other.

But it is said to be a long road which never turns. Some good
impressions had been made on this family, as we shall see hereafter.
Not, indeed, until there had been much unnecessary suffering, and many
an unwilling penalty paid for transgression, as well as much money
uselessly expended for physicians and medicine. For though I was
somewhat a favorite in the family, I was as yet young and inexperienced,
and many a wiser head than mine was from time to time invoked, and much
time and money lost in other ways, that might have been saved for better
and nobler purposes.

Among the items of loss, as well as of penalty, was that of offspring.
These were generally still-born. One, indeed, lived about two weeks and
then perished. The parents seemed to be written childless. Or rather,
they seemed to have written themselves so. They seemed destined
moreover, to follow their premature children, at no great distance, to
an untimely grave. For nothing was more obvious--I mean to the medical
observer--than at an age when everybody ought to be gaining in bodily no
less than in mental and moral vigor, they were both of them growing
feeble as well as irresolute.