aise it was to cure diseases of all kinds that the
Lord, blessed be His name! _amin, acheernah!_ planted them in the earth
for the use of his cratures. Why, sir, will you listen to me now, and
mark my words? There never was a complaint that follied either man or
baste, brute or bird, but a yarrib grows that 'ud cure it if it was
known. When the head's hot wid faver, and the heart low wid care, the
yarrib is to be found that will cool the head and rise the heart."

"Don't you think, now," said Woodward, imagining that he would catch
him, "that a glass of wine, or, what is better still, a good glass of
punch, would raise the heart better than all the herbs in the universe?"

"Lord bless me!" he exclaimed, as if in soliloquy; "the ignorance of the
rich and wealthy, and of great people altogether, is unknown! Wine
and punch! And what, will you tell me, does wine and punch come from?
Doesn't the wine come from the grapes that grow in forrin parts--sich
as we have in our hot-houses--and doesn't the whiskey that you make your
punch of grow from the honest barley in our own fields? So much for your
knowledge of yarribs."

"Why, there you are right, my old friend. I forgot that."

"You forgot it? Tell the truth at once, and say you didn't know it. But
may be you did forget it, for troth he'd be a poor crature that didn't
know whiskey was made from barley."

He here turned his red satirical eye upon Woodward, with a glance that
was strongly indicative of contempt for his general information.

"Well," he proceeded, "the power of yarribs is wondherful,--if it was
known to many as it is to me."

"Why, from long practice, I suppose, you must be skilful in the
properties ol herbs?"

"Well, indeed, you needn't only suppose it, but you may be sartin of it.
Have you a good appetite?"

"A particularly good one, I assure you."

"Now, wouldn't you think it strange that I could give you a dose that
'ud keep you on half a male a day for the next three months."

"God forbid," replied Woodward, who, among his other good qualities, was
an enormous trencherman,--"God forbid that ever such a dose should go
down my throat."

"Would you think, now," he proceeded, with a sinister grin that sent his
yellow tusk half an inch out of his mouth, "that if a man was jealous
of his wife, or a wife of her husband, I couldn't give either o' them a
dose that 'ud cure them?"

"Faith, I dare say you could," replied Woodward; "a dose that would free